Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
To cite this article: Neil Brenner & Christian Schmid (2015) Towards a new epistemology of the
urban?, City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 19:2-3, 151-182, DOI:
10.1080/13604813.2015.1014712
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
CITY, 2015
VOL. 19, NOS. 23, 151 182, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2015.1014712
New forms of urbanization are unfolding around the world that challenge inherited
conceptions of the urban as a fixed, bounded and universally generalizable settlement
type. Meanwhile, debates on the urban question continue to proliferate and intensify
within the social sciences, the planning and design disciplines, and in everyday political
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
struggles. Against this background, this paper revisits the question of the epistemology of
the urban: through what categories, methods and cartographies should urban life be
understood? After surveying some of the major contemporary mainstream and critical
responses to this question, we argue for a radical rethinking of inherited epistemological
assumptions regarding the urban and urbanization. Building upon reflexive approaches
to critical social theory and our own ongoing research on planetary urbanization, we
present a new epistemology of the urban in a series of seven theses. This epistemological
framework is intended to clarify the intellectual and political stakes of contemporary
debates on the urban question and to offer an analytical basis for deciphering the rapidly
changing geographies of urbanization and urban struggle under early 21st-century
capitalism. Our arguments are intended to ignite and advance further debate on the
epistemological foundations for critical urban theory and practice today.
Key words: urbanization, urban age, postcolonial urbanism, planetary urbanization, extended
urbanization, reflexivity, critical urban theory, rural
A
dramatic wave of urban restructur- ation endure and proliferate, at least three
ing has been unfolding across the macro-trends appear to be consolidating,
planet since the long 1980s. Follow- each of which challenges long-entrenched
ing the crisis of national-developmentalist assumptions regarding the nature of the
models of territorial development, the col- urban:
lapse of state socialism and the subsequent
intensification of global economic inte- (1) New geographies of uneven spatial
gration, a variety of contradictory urban development have been emerging
transformations has been under way. The through a contradictory interplay
causes, contours, contexts, interconnec- between rapid, explosive processes of
tions and implications of such transform- urbanization and various forms of stag-
ations are widely debated, and remain nation, shrinkage and marginalization,
extremely confusing in the wake of the often in close proximity to one another.
epistemological crises of the late 1960s and interpretive framework through which to
early 1970s, which fundamentally challenged investigate its production, evolution and con-
the entrenched orthodoxies of mainstream testation, they persisted in viewing the unit in
urban sociology, positivist urban policy questionthe urban region or agglomera-
research and quantitative urban geography, tionas the basic focal point of debates on
the intellectual foundations of urban studies the urban question (Castells [1972] 1977;
are today being profoundly destabilized. see also Katznelson 1992). Across otherwise
Since its origins in the early 20th century, deep methodological and political divides
the field of urban studies has been regularly and successive epistemological realignments,
animated by foundational debates regarding this largely uninterrogated presupposition
the nature of the urban question, often in has underpinned the major intellectual
quite generative ways. The intensification of traditions in 20th-century urban studies.
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
such debates in recent times could thus be Indeed, it has long been considered so
plausibly interpreted as a sign of creative self-evident that it did not require acknowl-
renaissance rather than of intellectual crisis. edgment, much less justification.
Today, however, the intense fragmentation, Today, this entrenched set of assump-
disorientation and downright confusion that tionsalong with a broad constellation of
permeate the field of urban studies are not closely associated epistemological frameworks
merely the result of methodological disagree- for confronting and mapping the urban ques-
ments (which of course persist) or due to the tionis being severely destabilized in the
obsolescence of a particular research para- wake of a new round of worldwide sociospa-
digm (Marxism, regulation theory, global tial restructuring. Of course, the power of
city theory or otherwise). Instead, as the agglomeration remains as fundamental as
national-developmentalist configuration of ever to the dynamics of industrialization; the
postwar world capitalism recedes rapidly spatial concentration of the means of pro-
into historical memory, and as the politico- duction, population and infrastructure is a
institutional, spatial and environmental potent generative force that continues to
impacts of various neoliberalized and author- ignite waves of capital accumulation and to
itarian forms of urban restructuring radiate reshape places, territories and landscapes at
and ricochet across the planet, a more intel- all spatial scales (Soja 2000; Kratke 2014;
lectually far-reaching structural crisis of Scott and Storper 2014). Despite this,
urban studies appears to be under way. however, the erstwhile boundaries of the
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the epis- cityalong with those of larger, metropolitan
temic crises of urban studies involved foun- units of agglomerationare being exploded
dational debates regarding the appropriate and reconstituted as new forms of urbaniz-
categories and methods through which to ation reshape inherited patterns of territorial
understand a sociospatial terrain whose organization, and increasingly crosscut the
basic contours and parameters were a matter urban/non-urban divide itself (Schmid 2006,
of broad consensus. Simply put, that consen- [2012] 2014; Brenner 2013, 2014a, 2014b;
sus involved the equation of the urban with a Brenner and Schmid 2014).
specific spatial unit or settlement typethe The contemporary crisis of urban studies is
city, or an upscaled territorial variant thus not only an expression of epistemic per-
thereof, such as the metropolis, the conurba- plexity (though the latter is still abundantly
tion, the metropolitan region, the megalopo- evident). From our point of view, rather, it
lis, the megacity, the megacity-region and so stems from an increasing awareness of funda-
forth. Even though radical critics such as mental uncertainties regarding the very sites,
Manuel Castells fiercely criticized established objects and focal points of urban theory and
ways of understanding this unit, and offered research under contemporary capitalism. In
an alternative, substantially reinvigorated a world of neatly circumscribed, relatively
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 155
bounded cities or urban units, whose core essential epistemological and political pre-
properties were a matter of generalized scho- condition for understanding the nature of
larly agreement, urban researchers could society itself. This proposition appears more
burrow into the myriad tasks associated apt than ever today. Whether in academic dis-
with understanding their underlying social, course or in the public sphere, the urban has
economic and cultural dynamics, historical become a privileged lens through which to
trajectories, inter-contextual variations and interpret, to map and, indeed, to attempt to
the various forms of regulation, conflict and influence contemporary social, economic,
struggle that emerged within them (Saunders political and environmental trends.
1986). However, under contemporary Paradoxically, however, rather than
circumstances, these basic conditions of directly confronting the radically trans-
possibility for urban research appear to have formed conditions for urban theory and
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
contemporary discussions of the global urban drastically homogenizes the variegated pat-
condition. It is repeated incessantly, mantra- terns and pathways of urbanization that
like, in scholarly papers, research reports have been emerging in recent decades across
and grant proposals, as well as in the public the world economy (Schmid [2012] 2014).
sphere of urban, environmental and architec- Just as problematically, by equating the
tural journalism. In effect, the assertion that urban exclusively with large and/or dense
we have crossed the fifty per cent urban population centers, urban age discourse
threshold has become the most quoted, but renders invisible the intimate, wide-ranging
therefore also among the most banal, formu- and dynamically evolving connections
lations in contemporary urban studies (for between contemporary shifts in city-building
historical contextualization and detailed cri- processes and the equally far-reaching trans-
tique, see Brenner and Schmid 2014). formations of putatively non-urban land-
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
As has been noted by many researchers, the scapes and spatial divisions of labor alluded
demographic data on which the urban age to above.
hypothesis hinges are deeply inadequate; Several parallel or derivative metanarra-
they are derived from nationally specific tives of the contemporary global urban con-
census agencies which define the city and dition have been popularized in close
the urban using a myriad of inconsistent, connection to the overarching ideology of
unreliable and incompatible indicators (Sat- the urban age (for a critical overview, see
terthwaite 2010). Moreover, within the Gleeson 2014). These variations on urban
major strands of urban age discourse, the age discourse involve a variety of normative,
city is defined with reference to an arbitrarily methodological, strategic and substantive
fixed population size, density threshold or concerns; they include, among others, the fol-
administrative classification, which is in turn lowing main streams:
taken as the main indicator demarcating the
presumed boundary between urban and . Urban triumphalism. Several recent,
non-urban areas. Even when these indicators popular books have presented cities as the
are further elaborated, for instance, with engines of innovation, civilization, prosper-
reference to commuting patterns, catchment ity and democracy, across historical and
areas and economic activities, the notion of regional contexts (see, e.g. Brugmann 2010;
cityness used within this discourse is still fun- Glaeser 2011). According to these triumph-
damentally empiricist. It presupposes that the alist perspectives, contemporary cities
city can be defined through (some combi- represent the latest expressions of a time-
nation of) statistically measurable variables tested sociospatial formula that has enabled
describing conditions (coded as either the progressive historical development of
urban or non-urban) within a bounded human society, technology and governance.
administrative zone. With a few exceptions This set of arguments represents an impor-
(i.e. Angel 2011), the coherent bounding of tant extension of urban age discourse
the zone in question is simply presupposed because it connects the UNs basic demo-
based upon extant administrative jurisdic- graphic propositions to broader, qualitat-
tions; the diverse economic, political and ively elaborated arguments concerning the
environmental processes that are reworking role of cities in unleashing humanitys econ-
the structured coherence (Harvey 1989) of omic, social and cultural potentials.
inherited urban formations are not acknowl- . Technoscientific urbanism. There has also
edged or analyzed (Brenner and Katsikis recently been an outpouring of influential
2014). Additionally, through its contention new approaches that mobilize the tools of
that the city has become the universally natural science, mathematics and big
dominant, endlessly replicable form of data analysis to analyze, and often to
global human settlement, urban age discourse predict, inter- and intra-urban spatial
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 157
arrangements (Bettencourt and West 2010; environmental crises are most dramatically
Batty 2013). Such neo-positivist, neo-nat- experienced, and as techno-social arenas in
uralist approaches represent a revival of which potential responses are being
important strands of postwar systems pioneered (for critical review, see Sat-
thinking in geography, planning and terthwaite 2004). Discussions of urban sus-
design discourse, which had been closely tainability are often linked to the two
aligned with national state projects of aforementioned strands of contemporary
urban social engineering and territorial urban discourse insofar as they celebrate
control. Contemporary discussions of cities as the most ecologically viable
smart cities represent an important paral- arrangements for human settlement (Girar-
lel strand of technoscientific urbanism, in det 2004; Meyer 2013) and/or propose new
which information technology corpor- technoscientific solutions for re-engineer-
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
ations are aggressively marketing new ing urban metabolic processes, often
modes of spatial monitoring, information through architectural and design interven-
processing and data visualization to tions under the rubric of an ecological
embattled municipal and metropolitan urbanism (Mostafavi and Doherty 2011).
governments around the world as a techni- In many cases, the proposed visions of a
cal fix for intractable governance pro- future urban ecological order entail the
blems (Greenfield 2013; Townsend 2013). construction of premium ecological
In the current context, technoscientific enclaves (Hodson and Marvin 2010) that
aspirations to reveal law-like regularities are substantially delinked from extant
within and among the worlds major cities infrastructural systems, and thus intensify
often serve to naturalize the forms of socio- inherited patterns of territorial exclusion.
spatial disorder, enclosure and displace- Emergent strategies to enhance urban resi-
ment that have been induced through the lience in the face of climate change and
last several decades of neoliberal regulatory associated socio-natural disasters contain
restructuring and recurrent geoeconomic similar hazards insofar as they normalize
crisis (Gleeson 2014). Despite their more contemporary forms of market-oriented
elaborate methodological apparatus and governance and associated processes of ter-
their capacity to process huge data assem- ritorial stigmatization (Fainstein 2014;
blages, these technoscientific urbanisms Slater 2014). Research on urban sustain-
replicate, and indeed reinforce, the basic ability remains heterogeneous in methodo-
urban age understanding of cities as univer- logical, thematic and political terms, and
sally replicable, coherently bounded settle- several scholars have recently made impor-
ment units. The law-bound understanding tant critical interventions that link this pro-
of urbanization it embraces is used not blematique to uneven spatial development,
only for epistemological purposes, to neoliberalization and struggles for environ-
justify a universalizing, naturalistic mental justice (Rees and Wackernagel
research agenda, but as part of a broader 1996; Atkinson 2007, 2009; Elmqvist
technoscientific ideology that aims to 2014). However, the main thrust of recent
depoliticize urban life and thus to assist debates on urban sustainability has been
the cause of sound management (Gleeson to promote a vision of cities as bounded,
2014, 348). technologically controlled islands of eco-
. Debates on urban sustainability. An rationality that are largely delinked from
additional metanarrative of the contempor- the broader territorial formations in
ary global urban condition focuses on the which they are currently embedded. In
key role of cities in the deepening planetary this way, urban age discourse is translated
ecological crisis. Here, cities are viewed at into a city-centric techno-environmental-
once as the front lines where ism that often justifies and even celebrates
158 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
megacities discussion partially tempers which these discourses are mobilized, their
the universalizing thrust of urban age dis- common wrapping is a bright universalism
course by emphasizing the specificity of (Gleeson 2014, 351) that masks the proliferat-
urban settlements in poorer countries, ing crisis-tendencies and contradictions of
whether due to colonial legacies, earlier contemporary capitalism.
strategies of import-substitution industri- In a striking parallel to the long-discredited
alization, the impacts of contemporary modernization theories of the postwar
forms of structural adjustment policy or, period, the various strands of this metanarra-
most prominently, the proliferation of tive are now being used as discursive frames
informal settlement patterns within to legitimate a wide range of neoliberalizing
dense city cores and around metropolitan proposals to transform inherited urban built
fringes. However, in many ways, urban environments. The simple message that the
age approaches articulate directly to, and city has assumed unprecedented planetary
reinforce, discussions of mega-cities: the importance has thus come to serve as an all-
latter, with their pervasive crises of purpose, largely depoliticized ideological
employment, housing, public health and rubric around which, in diverse contexts,
environment, are commonly represented aggressively market-oriented and/or authori-
as the unplanned, and possibly unplan- tarian contemporary projects and prescrip-
nable, spatial units in which the contem- tions of urban transformation are being
porary urban transition is unfolding; narrated, justified and naturalized. At once
they are thus the most elementary units of in the public sphere, in planning and design
the contemporary planet of slums (Davis discourse, and in scholarly arenas, such uni-
2006; for a strong counterpoint, see Roy versalizing, totalizing and city-centric ideol-
2005). Therefore, even if discussions of ogies serve to reassert the viability of all-
megacities emphasize the distinctiveness too-familiar urban epistemologies even as
of such spaces relative to Euro- their historical and sociospatial conditions
American or Northern urbanisms and the of possibility are being superseded in practice
worldwide system of global cities, they (for further reflection on this apparent
preserve the basic emphasis on the city as paradox, see Wachsmuth 2014).
a bounded settlement type that underpins
each of the major strands of urban age
discourse. Reflexive epistemological openings
These various versions of urban age discourse In contrast to the unapologetically self-
must be understood as a powerful series assured universalism of urban age ideologies,
of ideological interventions into rapidly the core agendas of critical urban social
churning, fragmenting fields of urban science have become rather disjointed in
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 159
recent years. Writing at the turn of the mil- see also Brenner 2009). This entails an insis-
lennium, Soja (2000, xii) observed: tence on the situatedness of all forms of
knowledge, and a relentless drive to reinvent
[T]he field of urban studies has never been so key categories of analysis in relation to
robust, so expansive in the number of subject ongoing processes of historical change.
areas and scholarly disciplines involved with Rather than presupposing a rigid separation
the study of cities, so permeated by new ideas between subject (knower) and object (the
and approaches, so attuned to the major site or context under investigation), reflexive
political and economic events of our times,
approaches emphasize their mutual consti-
and so theoretically and methodologically
unsettled. It may be the best of times and the
tution and ongoing transformation through
worst of times to be studying cities, for while social practices and political struggles,
there is so much that is new and challenging to including in the realm of interpretation and
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
respond to, there is much less agreement than ideology. In Archers (2007, 72) more
ever before as to how best to make sense, general formulation, a reflexive approach to
practically and theoretically, of the new urban social theory involves a subject considering
worlds being created. an object in relation to itself, bending that
object back upon itself in a process which
Nearly 15 years later, this statement remains includes the self being able to consider itself
an apt characterization of the intellectual as its own object.
landscape of critical urban studies: it is still In the context of critical urban studies, this
filled with creative, energetic and eclectic philosophical requirement involves not only
responses to dynamically changing con- the constant interrogation of changing
ditions, but it is also still quite fragmented urban realities, but the equally vigilant analy-
among diverse epistemological frameworks sis and revision of the very conceptual and
and a wide range of ontological assumptions. methodological frameworks being used to
Although this situation of intellectual frag- investigate the urban process. For any reflex-
mentation results from some productive ive approach to urban theory, therefore, the
forms of epistemological, conceptual and categories and methods of urban analysis
methodological experimentation, it is also are important focal points of inquiry: under-
problematic insofar as it limits the fields col- standing their conditions of emergence and
lective capacity to offer convincing, accessi- intelligibility, as well as the possibility of
ble alternatives to the dominant urban their destabilization or obsolescence, rep-
ideologies of our time. Particularly in light resent essential, ongoing and potentially
of the broad appeal of simplistic urban age transformative research tasks. Simply put,
reasoning to scholars, designers and policy- reflexive approaches to urban theory must
makers, and its continued instrumentaliza- constantly subject their own categories and
tion in the service of neoliberalizing and/or methods to critical interrogation, even as
authoritarian forms of urban governance the latter are being mobilized in ongoing
and environmental engineering, the develop- research endeavors.
ment of such critical counterpositions is a During the last decade, amidst the deepen-
matter of increasing urgency for all those ing intellectual fragmentation of urban
committed to developing more adequate studies outlined above, a notably reflexive
ways of interpretingand, ultimately, of strand of critical urban scholarship has been
influencingthe patterns and pathways of consolidated under the rubric of postcolonial
contemporary urbanization. urban studies. In a wide-ranging series of
One of the hallmarks of any form of critical interventions, the main protagonists of this
social theory, including critical urban theory, tradition of urban research have revealed the
is epistemological reflexivity (Horkheimer ways in which inherited urban epistem-
[1968] 1972; Bourdieu 1990; Postone 1993; ologies have been implicitly derived from
160 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
ways of understanding emergent urban con- city (see, e.g. Seekings 2013; for critical dis-
ditions and ongoing urban transformations. cussion, see Peck 2015b). Many of those
Similarly, and in stark contrast to some con- accounts present thick descriptionsfor
temporary approaches that pursue ontologi- instance, of everyday life and subaltern
cal or quasi-metaphysical speculations struggleas theoretically self-evident coun-
regarding the nature of the urban, we terpoints to the apparent totalizations of
endorse a nominalist approach that permits Euro-American frameworks (for a critical
an open-ended interplay between critique discussion, see Mabin 2014; see also
(of inherited traditions of urban theory and Brenner, Madden, and Wachsmuth 2011).
contemporary urban ideologies), epistemo- Clearly, such strategic essentialisms (Roy
logical experimentation (leading to the elab- 2009) have been generative in both methodo-
oration of new concepts and methods) and logical and empirical terms, especially as a
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
contexts, but the context(s) of those con- In effect, even though a southern lens is
textsin processual, multiscalar terms thus being mobilized within this literature to
remains an urgent task for contemporary criti- reconceptualize the geographies of the
cal urban theorists. urban, its concrete sites of investigation
For these reasons, rather than equating the have remained relatively familiar local or
project of postcolonial urbanism simply with metropolitan unitsthe great population
a commitment to concrete, regionally situ- centers of Latin America, sub-Saharan
ated or place-based studies derived from a Africa, South and Southeast Asia, East Asia
southern positionality, it may be most pro- and the Middle East. In a form of stubbornly
ductive, as Robinson (2014, 61) has recently persistent methodological cityism (Angelo
proposed, to understand such methodologi- and Wachsmuth 2014), major strands of post-
cal positions as interim moves anticipating colonial urban studies still demarcate their
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
more sustained formulations for building research terrain with the same conditions
global urban analyses (see also Roy 2014). large, dense and heterogeneous settle-
The theses presented below are intended to mentsupon which the inherited field of
contribute to that collective project, which Euro-American urban studies has long
would connect the deconstructive epistemo- focused its analytical gaze. The broader land-
logical critiques and conceptual innovations scapes of urbanization, which extend far
of postcolonial urban theory to the equally beyond the megacities, metropolitan regions
urgent task of deciphering the evolving, and and peri-urban zones of the postcolonial
increasingly planetary, context of context world, are not completely ignored within
in which contemporary forms of neoliberal this literature (as illustrated, for example, in
capitalist urbanization are unfolding across its concern with the geographies of
the North/South divide. migration). But nor, however, are they
This point connects to a second methodo- brought into explicit or reflexive focus
logical tendency in postcolonial urban when postcolonial urbanists frame their
theory from which our own epistemological research agendas and conceptual cartogra-
orientations significantly divergenamely, phies (for further elaborations, see Robinson
its tendency to treat the city as the privi- 2014). We argue below that such landscapes
leged terrain for urban research. To be sure, of extended urbanizationunderstood as
in contrast to the totalizing, empiricist settle- fundamental conditions of possibility for
ment fetishism of urban age ideology and the production of historically and geographi-
other mainstream discourses of global urban- cally specific forms of citynessmust be
ism, postcolonial urban studies embraces a analyzed and theorized centrally within any
reflexively relational approach to the con- updated epistemology of the urban for the
struction of cityness. Rather than reifying 21st century. Today, such zones can no
the city as a generic, universal settlement longer be understood as elements of a rural
type, this approach is productively attuned outside that impacts the city and is in turn
to the multiple sociospatial configurations effected by it; rather, they are now increas-
in which agglomerations are crystallizing ingly internalized within world-encompass-
under contemporary capitalism, as well as ing, if deeply variegated, processes of
to the transnational, inter-scalar and often planetary urbanization.
extra-territorial webs through which their The epistemological orientations presented
developmental pathways are mediated or below are intended to contribute to the col-
worlded (see, e.g. Roy 2009, 2014). And lective project of illuminating the great
yet, despite its sophisticated methodological variety of urbanization processes that are pre-
foundations, the bulk of postcolonial urban sently reshaping the planet. These theses are
research and theory-building has, in practice, closely connected to our developing theori-
focused on cities, tout court. zation of planetary urbanization, but they
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 163
are not intended to elaborate that analysis in action can only occur through a process of
any detail. Instead, our proposals are meant theoretical abstraction.
to demarcate some relatively broad epistemo- Even the most descriptively nuanced,
logical parameters within which a multi- quantitatively sophisticated or geospatially
plicity of reflexive approaches to critical enhanced strands of urban research necess-
urban theory might be pursued. We aim not arily presuppose any number of pre-empiri-
to advance a specific, substantive theory of cal assumptions regarding the nature of the
the urban, but to present a general epistemo- putatively urban condition, zone or trans-
logical framework through which this formation that is under analysis (Brenner
elusive, yet seemingly omnipresent condition and Katsikis 2014). Such assumptions are
of the contemporary world might be analyti- not mere background conditions or inciden-
cally deciphered, even as it continues to tal framing devices, but constitute the very
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
evolve and mutate before our eyes, thereby interpretive lens through which urban
changing yet again the epistemic foundations research becomes intelligible as such. For
for its future interpretation. This discussion is this reason, the urban question famously
thus intended as a meta-theoretical exercise: posed by Castells ([1972] 1977) cannot be
instead of attempting to nail down a fixed understood as a theoretical detour, or as a
definition of the essential properties of the mere intellectual diversion for those inter-
urban phenomenon once and for all, it ested in concept formation or in the fields
involves developing a reflexive epistemologi- historical evolution. Rather, engagement
cal framework that may help bring into with the urban question is a constitutive
focus and render intelligible the ongoing moment of theoretical abstraction within all
reconstitution of that phenomenon in approaches to urban research and practice,
relation to the simultaneous evolution of the whether or not they reflexively conceptualize
very concepts and methods being used to it as such.
study it. Any rigorously reflexive account of Since the early 20th century, the evolution
the urban requires this meta-theoretical of urban studies as a research field has been
moment. animated by intense debates regarding the
appropriate conceptualization of the
urbanits geographical parameters, its his-
Thesis 1: the urban and urbanization are torical pathways and its key social, economic,
theoretical categories, not empirical objects cultural or institutional dimensions (Saunders
1986; Hartmann et al. 1986; Katznelson
In most mainstream traditions, the urban is 1992). These debates have underpinned and
treated as an empirically self-evident, univer- animated the succession of research para-
sal category corresponding to a particular digms on urban questions across the social
type of bounded settlement space, the city. and historical sciences, and they have also
While such empiricist, universalistic under- been closely articulated to broader develop-
standings continue to underpin important ments, controversies and paradigm shifts
strands of urban research and policy, includ- within the major traditions of social theory,
ing contemporary mainstream discourses on planning and design. In each framing,
global urbanism, we argue that the urban, depending on the underlying epistemological
and the closely associated concept of urbaniz- perspective, conceptual grammar, carto-
ation, must be understood as theoretical graphic apparatus and normative-political
abstractions; they can only be defined orientation, the urban has been equated
through the labor of conceptualization. The with quite divergent properties, practices,
urban is thus a theoretical category, not an conditions, experiences, institutions and geo-
empirical object: its demarcation as a zone graphies, which have in turn defined the basic
of thought, representation, imagination or horizons for research, representation and
164 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
practice. Such demarcations have entailed not conditions within local and regional contexts
only diverse, often incompatible, ways of under modern capitalism have long been
understanding cities and agglomeration, but tightly interdependent with one another,
also a range of interpretive methods, analyti- and have been profoundly shaped by
cal strategies and cartographic techniques broader patterns of capitalist industrializ-
through which those conditions are distin- ation, regulation and uneven sociospatial
guished from a non-urban outsidethe development. The recognition of context
suburban, the rural, the natural or otherwise. dependencythe need to provincialize
In this sense, rather than developing through urban theorythus stands in tension with
a simple accretion of concrete investigations an equally persistent need to understand the
on a pre-given social condition or spatial historically evolving totality of inter-contex-
arrangement, the field of urban studies has tual patterns, developmental pathways and
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
evolved through ongoing theoretical debates systemic transformations in which such con-
regarding the appropriate demarcation, texts are embedded, whether at national,
interpretation and mapping of the urban supranational or worldwide scales.
itself. In all cases, therefore, theoretical defi-
The urban is, then, an essentially contested nitions of the urban and the historical-
concept and has been subject to frequent rein- geographical contexts of their emergence
vention in relation to the challenges engen- are tightly intertwined. This proposition
dered by research, practice and struggle. applies whether the urban is delineated as
While some approaches to the urban have a local formation or as a global condition;
asserted, or aspired to, universal validity, and the contexts of theory production must
thus claimed context-independent applica- likewise be understood in both situated
bility, every attempt to frame the urban in and inter-contextual terms. Any reflexive
analytical, geographical and normative-politi- approach to the urban question must make
cal terms has in fact been strongly mediated explicit the venue of its own research prac-
through the specific historical-geographical tice (be it a specific place, an urbanizing ter-
formation(s) in which it emergedfor ritory or a broader socioeconomic network)
example, Manchester, Paris and classically and consider the implications of the latter
industrial models of urbanization in the mid- for its own epistemological and represen-
19th century; Chicago, Berlin, London and tational framework.
rapidly metropolitanizing landscapes of Such definitional debates and theoretical
imperialcapitalist urbanization in the early controversies are not only derived from
20th century; and Los Angeles, Shanghai, specific contexts of urbanization; they also
Dubai, Singapore and neoliberalizing models powerfully impact those contexts insofar as
of globally networked urbanization in the they help clarify, construct, legitimate, disse-
last three decades. As Gieryn (2006, 6) minate and naturalize particular visions of
explains, the city is both the subject and the sociospatial organization that privilege
venue of studyscholars in urban studies con- certain elements of the urban process while
stitute the city both as the empirical referent of neglecting or excluding others. These often-
analysis and the physical site where investi- contradictory framing visions, interpret-
gation takes place. ations and cartographies of the urban (as
This circumstance means that all engage- site, territory, ecology and experience)
ments with urban theory, whether Euro- mediate urban design, planning, policy and
American, postcolonial or otherwise, are in practice, with powerful consequences for
some sense provincial, or context-depen- ongoing strategies and struggles, in and
dent, because they are mediated through con- outside of major institutions, to shape and
crete experiences of time and space within reshape urbanized landscapes. It is essential,
particular places. Just as crucially, though, therefore, to connect debates on the urban
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 165
question to assessments of their practical and sociospatial arrangements at all scales; and
political implications, institutional yet it also continually creatively destroys
expressions and everyday consequences in the latter to produce new patterns of socio-
specific contexts of urban restructuring. spatial organization (Harvey 1985). There is
Such a task may only be accomplished, thus no singular morphology of the urban;
however, if the underlying assumptions there are, rather, many processes of urban
associated with framing conceptualizations transformation that crystallize across the
of the urban are made explicit, subjected to world at various spatial scales, with wide-
critical scrutiny and revised continually in ranging, often unpredictable consequences
relation to evolving research questions, nor- for inherited sociospatial arrangements.
mative-political orientations and practical Second, the urban can no longer be under-
concerns. stood as a settlement type. The field of urban
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
Scott 1988; Kratke 2014). Obviously, large ultimately, around much of the entire planet
agglomerations remain central arenas and (see Thesis 5 below). Third, the process of
engines of massive urban transformations, extended urbanization frequently involves
and thus clearly merit sustained investigation, the enclosure of land from established social
not least under early 21st-century capitalism. uses in favor of privatized, exclusionary and
However, we reject the widespread assump- profit-oriented modes of appropriation,
tion within both mainstream and critical tra- whether for resource extraction, agro-
ditions of urban studies that agglomerations business, logistics functions or otherwise. In
represent the privileged or even exclusive this sense, extended urbanization is inti-
terrain of urban development (Scott and mately intertwined with the violence of
Storper 2014). In contrast, we propose that accumulation by dispossession (often ani-
the historical and contemporary geographies mated and enforced by state institutions)
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
urbanization process as a whole. Thus, that are unleashed, but often suppressed,
without abandoning the long-standing through capitalist industrial development
concern of urbanists to understand agglom- (see Lefebvre [1974] 1991 on differential
eration processes, we propose to connect space; and Lefebvre 2009 on the politics of
that familiar problematique to a wide- space).
ranging set of sociospatial transformations The creative destruction of sociospatial
that have not typically been viewed as being arrangements within large urban centers has
connected to urbanization. long been recognized in radical approaches
Concentrated and extended urbanization to the periodization of urban development
are inextricably intertwined with the (Gordon 1978; Harvey 1989). In such
process of differential urbanization, in approaches, successive configurations of the
which inherited sociospatial configurations urban built environment are thought tempor-
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
and Denis 2000; Thompson, Bunnell, and reflexively connects the three moments of
Parthasarathy 2013; McGee [1991] 2014). urbanization demarcated here may thus
However, it can be argued that the geogra- offer some productive new interpretive per-
phies of extended urbanization have likewise spectives not only on the historical and con-
been undergoing intensive processes of crea- temporary geographies of capitalist
tive destruction throughout the history of industrial development, but also on some of
capitalist industrial development, generally the socio-ecological conditions that are
in relation to major waves of crisis-induced today commonly thought to be associated
restructuring and political struggle within with the age of the anthropocene (Crutzen
urban centers and the broader territorial 2002; for a critical discussion, see Chakra-
economies in which the latter are embedded barty 2009; Malm and Hornborg 2014).
(Moore 2008, 2011). Such transformations
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
spatial arrangements (Brenner 2004; Schmid it through their daily routines and practices,
2003). which frequently involve struggles regarding
Finally, urbanization mediates and trans- the very form and content of the urban
forms everyday life. Whether within dense itself, at once as a site and stake of social
population centers or in more dispersed experience. The qualities of urban space,
locations embedded within the broader across diverse locations, are thus also
urban fabric, urban space is defined by the embedded within and reproduced through
people who use, appropriate and transform everyday experiences, which in turn
172 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
crystallize longer term processes of socializa- process of metropolitan expansion has long
tion that are materialized within built been premised upon the intensive activation
environments and territorial arrangements. and transformation of progressively broader
Clearly, this is a broad conceptualization landscapes of extended urbanization which
of urbanization: it involves a wide-ranging supply agglomerations with their most basic
constellation of material, social, institutional, socioeconomic and socio-metabolic require-
environmental and everyday transformations ments. The patterns and pathways of socio-
associated with capitalist industrialization, spatial restructuring that crystallized around
the circulation of capital and the management the world during the long, violent and inten-
of territorial development at various spatial sely contested transition from industrial and
scales. We would insist, however, on dis- metropolitan to territorial formations of
tinguishing urbanization from the more urbanization, roughly from the 1830s to the
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
permit intensified, accelerated capital circula- were previously relatively insulated from its
tion (Harvey 2010; Merrifield 2014). wide-ranging imprints. These include (a) a
In the early 1970s, Lefebvre ([1970] 2003) major expansion in agro-industrial export
anticipated this situation, advancing the zones, with associated large-scale infrastruc-
radical hypothesis of the complete urbaniz- tural investments and land-use transform-
ation of society. For Lefebvre, this was an ations to produce and circulate food and
emergent tendency that might be realized in biofuels for world markets (McMichael
the future, but he did not speculate as to 2013); (b) a massive expansion in investments
when or how it might actually occur, and related to mineral and oil extraction, in large
with what consequences. Today, it is increas- part due to the post-2003 commodity boom
ingly evident that the urban has indeed manifested in dramatic increases in global
become a worldwide condition in which all prices for raw materials, especially metals
aspects of social, economic, political and and fuels (Arboleda 2015); and (c) the acceler-
environmental relations are enmeshed, ated consolidation and extension of long-
across places, territories and scales, crosscut- distance transportation and communications
ting any number of long-entrenched geo- infrastructures (including networks such as
graphical divisions (urban/rural, city/ roads, canals, railways, waterways and
countryside, society/nature, North/South, pipelines; and nodal points such as seaports,
East/West). The dawn of planetary urbaniz- airports and intermodal logistics hubs)
ation is being expressed through several designed to reduce the transaction costs
intertwined tendencies that have only just associated with the production and circula-
begun to come into analytical focus during tion of capital (Notteboom and Rodrigue
the early 21st century, but which 2005; Hein 2011; Hesse 2013). Under these
urgently require the scrutiny of critical conditions, erstwhile rural zones around
urban thinkers. the world are being profoundly transformed:
Perhaps most prominent among these is various forms of agro-industrial consolida-
the remarkable territorial expansion of tion and land enclosure are undermining
urban agglomerations, vividly captured small- and medium-sized forms of food pro-
through Sudjics (1993) notion of 100-mile duction; new forms of export-oriented indus-
cities, which has blurred and even begun to trial extraction are destabilizing established
dissolve the boundaries between many models of land-use and social reproduction,
major cities and their surrounding territories as well as environmental security; and
or erstwhile hinterlands (Soja and Kanai newly consolidated inter-regional migration
[2006] 2014). Today, urban agglomerations networks and communications infrastruc-
can no longer be understood simply as tures are dramatically rearticulating the inter-
nodal concentrations organized around and dependencies between villages, small towns
oriented towards a single urban core. and larger, often-distant urban centers,
174 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
through major zones of the worlds seas and the urban to be demarcated as a stable, coher-
oceans (Diener et al. 2006; Gugger, Couling, ent and discrete terrain. Instead, this suppo-
and Blanchard 2012; Urban Theory Lab sedly non-urban realm has now been
2015). While the ecology and topography of thoroughly engulfed within the variegated
these landscapes may still appear relatively patterns and pathways of a planetary for-
pristine or untouched by the footprint of mation of urbanization. In effect, it has been
industrial capitalism, such impressions are internalized into the very core of the urbaniz-
deeply misleading. In fact, for several ation process.
decades now, strategic places, grids, corridors This proposition may prove controversial,
and concession zones within such territories especially if it is misunderstood as a totalizing
have been aggressively enclosed and opera- generalization that ignores the continued
tionalized, usually by transnational corpor- differences, whether in social, institutional,
ations under the legal protection of infrastructural or environmental terms,
neoliberal and/or authoritarian national between large metropolitan centers and
states and various kinds of intergovernmental zones characterized, for instance, by low or
organizations, to facilitate new forms of dispersed population, minimal or degraded
resource extraction, energy and agro-indus- built environments and/or relatively poor
trial production, an unprecedented expansion communications and transportation connec-
of logistics infrastructures, as well as various tivity (for discussion and debate of this
additional forms of land-use intensification issue, see Catterall 2014; Catterall and
and environmental plunder intended to Wilson 2014; Scott and Storper 2014). Our
support the relentless growth and consump- claim here, however, is not that rural or
tion imperatives of the worlds major cities. non-urban zones have totally disappeared;
Under contemporary conditions, then, tra- on the contrary, such spaces still exist and
ditional models of metropolis and hinterland, may even play decisive roles in the social, pol-
center and periphery, city and countryside, itical and economic life of certain regions, for
have been exploded. The urban/rural opposi- instance, in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia or
tion, which has long served as an epistemo- Latin America (see, e.g. Scott 2009).
logical anchor for the most basic research However, the conditions within so-called
operations of urban studies, has today rural zones should not be taken for
become an increasingly obfuscatory basis granted; they require careful, contextually
for deciphering emergent patterns and path- specific and theoretically reflexive investi-
ways of sociospatial restructuring around gations that may be seriously impeded
the world. On the one hand, the geographies through the unreflexive use of generic labels
of uneven spatial development are today that predetermine their patterns and path-
being articulated as an interweaving of new ways of development and their form and
developmental patterns and potentials degree of connection to other places,
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 175
regions and territories. Indeed, much con- On the contrary, as conceived here, urbaniz-
temporary research on putatively rural ation under capitalism is always a historically
regions has shown that many such areas are and geographically variegated process: it is
being transformed through and embedded mediated through historically and geographi-
within urbanization processes, precisely cally specific institutions, representations,
through the kinds of accumulation strategies, strategies and struggles that are, in turn, con-
infrastructural projects and socio-metabolic flictually articulated to the cyclical rhythms
linkages we propose to theorize under the of worldwide capital accumulation and their
rubric of extended urbanization (see, e.g. associated social, political and environmental
Cloke 2006; Diener et al. 2006; Woods contradictions. Rather than being analyzed
2009; Alton 2014; Wilson 2014; Monte-Mor through monodimensional or formalistic
2014a, 2014b). Such studies strongly reinforce interpretive frames, capitalist urbanization
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
our contention that the inherited urban/rural must be understood as a polymorphic, multi-
distinction has come to obscure much more scalar and emergent dynamic of sociospatial
than it reveals regarding the entities, pro- transformation: it hinges upon and continu-
cesses and transformations being classified ously produces differentiated, unevenly
on either side of the divide it aspires to developed sociospatial configurations at all
demarcate. scales. The task for any contemporary urban
Precisely against this background, the epistemology is therefore to develop an
concept of planetary urbanization may analytical and cartographic orientation
offer a useful epistemological reorientation. through which to decipher its uneven, rest-
Obviously, it cannot substitute for concrete lessly mutating crystallizations.
research on specific zones of sociospatial Capitalist urbanization might best be con-
transformation anywhere in the world. But ceived as a process of constant, if contested,
it does open up an epistemological path innovation in the production of sociospatial
through which the latter may be pursued arrangementsalbeit one that always simul-
in relation to broader questions regarding taneously collides with, and thereby trans-
the increasingly worldwide, if deeply forms, inherited formations of spatial
polarized and uneven, geographies in practice, regulatory coordination and every-
which even the most apparently remote day life (Schmid 2013). Under capitalism,
places, regions and territories are now inex- urbanization is always articulated in contex-
tricably interwoven. tually embedded sociospatial formations,
since it is precisely in relation to, and
through collisions with, inherited structures
Thesis 6: urbanization unfolds through of uneven spatial development that its
variegated patterns and pathways of specific patterns and pathways are forged
uneven spatial development and fought out. In this way, the abstract, uni-
versalizing processes of capitalist industrial-
The emergence of a planetary formation of ization are materialized in historically and
urbanization does not entail a homogeniz- geographically specific urban configurations,
ation of sociospatial landscapes; it is not which are in turn relentlessly transformed
expressed through the globalization of a through the interplay of accumulation strat-
uniform condition of cityness (or urban egies, regulatory projects and sociopolitical
sprawl) across the entire planet; and it does struggles at various spatial scales.
not involve the transformation of the earth The consolidation of a planetary configur-
as a whole into a single world-city, akin to ation of urban development since the 1980s is
the Death Star in George Lucas Star Wars thus only the most recent expression of this
films or the planet Trantor in Isaac intense variegation, differentiation and con-
Asimovs science fiction series, Foundation. tinual reorganization of landscapes. On the
176 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
one hand, planetary urbanization is the search for such new urban forms is an intel-
cumulative product of the earlier longue lectual trap: it yields only relatively super-
duree cycles of urbanization that have ficial insights into the modalities and
forged, differentiated and continually consequences of the wide-ranging transform-
reshaped the worldwide geographies of capit- ations that are unleashed through the urban-
alism since the mid-19th century. At the same ization process. Creative destruction is the
time, this latest formation of urbanization has modus operandi of capitalist forms of urban
emerged in the wake of the post-1980s wave development; new urban geographies are
of global neoliberalization, financial specu- thus constantly being produced through the
lation and accumulation by dispossession dynamics of differential urbanization,
that has at once accelerated and intensified whether within large urban centers or across
the process of commodification and, by con- extended operational landscapes. The essen-
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
sequence, the uneven extension of industrial tial task, therefore, is less to distinguish
infrastructures around much of the planet new urban forms that are putatively super-
(Thesis 5). However, despite abundant evi- seding earlier spatial morphologies, than to
dence of accelerating urbanization and investigate the historically and geographically
unprecedented worldwide interconnectivity, specific dynamics of creative destruction that
the production of planetary urban landscapes underpin the patterns and pathways of
during the last three decades has not entailed urbanization, both historically and in the
a simple homogenization of sociospatial con- contemporary epoch.
ditions. Rather, the dawn of planetary urban- Much work remains to be done to con-
ization appears to have markedly accentuated front this challenge. A new vocabulary of
and rewoven the differentiations and polariz- urbanization is urgently required that
ations that have long been both precondition would help us, both analytically and carto-
and product of the urbanization process graphically, to decipher the differentiated
under capitalism, albeit in qualitatively new and rapidly mutating landscapes of urbaniz-
configurations whose contours remain extre- ation that are today being produced across
mely difficult to decipher. the planet. While the shifting geographies of
In an attempt to analyze these develop- agglomeration must obviously remain a
ments, contemporary urban thinkers have primary focus in such an endeavor, patterns
introduced dozens of new concepts intended of extended urbanization must now likewise
to designate various putatively new urban be positioned centrally in any sustained
phenomena (Taylor and Lang 2004; effort to elaborate new concepts and
Wolfrum, Nerdinger, and Schaubeck 2008). methods for deciphering this emergent, vola-
While these endeavors productively under- tile and still largely unfamiliar worldwide
score the changing geographies of the urban urban fabric.
in contemporary global society, most have
been focused too rigidly upon emergent
urban forms that appear to have ruptured Thesis 7: the urban is a collective project in
inherited sociospatial arrangements. These which the potentials generated through
include, for instance, purportedly new kinds urbanization are appropriated and
of cities (global cities, megacities, edge contested
cities, in-between cities, airport cities, infor-
mal cities and the like), regions (global city- The preceding theses have attempted to
regions, megacity-regions, polycentric clarify in analytical terms some of the foun-
metropolitan regions and so forth) as well as dations for a new epistemology of the urban
inter-urban networks, corridors and the that could more productively illuminate
like. However, within the epistemological both historical and contemporary geogra-
framework proposed here, the constant phies of capitalist urbanization than inherited
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 177
frameworks. We conclude with a final thesis [1974] 1991, [1970] 2003). The definition of
that underscores the essentially political char- the urban is thus not an exclusively theoreti-
acter of such epistemological considerations. cal question; it is ultimately a practical one: it
Here we build upon our previous discussion is necessarily articulated through debates,
of differential urbanization (Thesis 3), controversies, struggles, uprisings and
which emphasized the relentless drive revolts, and it is ultimately realized in the
towards creative destruction under capitalism pleasures, routines and dramas of everyday
and the powerful potentials for radical socio- life.
spatial transformation associated with it. In recent years, many radical urban theor-
Such potentials are, we argue, an essential ists have wrestled with this constellation of
product and stake of urbanization: they are issues through explorations of Lefebvres
generated through the productive force of ([1968] 1996) classic concept of the right to
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
agglomeration and associated operational the city (Marcuse 2012). Originally elabo-
landscapes; they are often instrumentalized rated in the context of the political uprisings
through capital and state institutions to facili- of the late 1960s in Paris, this slogan sub-
tate historically specific forms of industrializ- sequently became an important rallying cry
ation and political regulation; but they are for political mobilizations, which have
also reappropriated, redistributed and conti- sought to connect diverse struggles that
nually remade through the everyday use and were related in some way to the urban ques-
contestation of urban space. tion (i.e. regarding rights to housing, trans-
The urban can be productively understood portation, education, public health,
as a transformative potential that is con- recreational infrastructures or environmental
stantly generated through processes of urban- safety). Since the long 1980s, the demand for
ization. As both Georg Simmel and Henri the right to the city has become even more
Lefebvre paradigmatically recognized in widespread around the world, and its politi-
different moments of 20th-century capitalist cal content has meanwhile been differentiated
development, this transformative potential to encompass a variety of normative and
inheres in the social, economic and cultural ideological positions, policy proposals,
differentiations that are produced through movement demands and popular constituen-
urbanization, which connect diverse popu- cies in diverse local and national contexts
lations, institutions, activities, interactions across the world (Mayer 2012; Schmid 2012).
and experiments in specific sociospatial con- Given our arguments and proposals above,
figurations (Schmid 2015a). The harnessing however, struggles over the right to the city
of such potentials is of central importance in must be fundamentally reframedfor, as
the process of capital accumulation and in Harvey (2012, xv) notes, to claim the right
technologies of political regulation. At the to the city is, in effect, to claim a right to
same time, social movements struggle to something that no longer exists (for an ana-
appropriate such potentials for everyday logous discussion, see Merrifield 2013).
uses, social reproduction and cultural exper- Clearly, struggles over access to urban
imentation. In precisely this sense, the resources in large citiesand over the collec-
urban cannot be completely subsumed tive power to produce and transform them
under the abstract logics of capitalist industri- remain as fundamental as ever, and will con-
alization or state domination: it is always co- tinue to shape ongoing processes of urbaniz-
produced and transformed through its users, ation around the world. However, under
who may strive to appropriate its actualized contemporary conditions of planetary urban-
or unrealized potentials towards collective ization, the classical city (and its metropolitan
social uses, to create new forms of experience, and regional variants) can no longer serve as
connection and experimentationin short, to the primary reference point for urban
produce a different form of life (Lefebvre struggles or for visions of possible urban
178 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
worlds (Harvey 1996). Instead, a wide range only of urban spaces, but of urban struggles
of new urban practices and discourses are themselves, no matter where they are situ-
being produced in diverse places, territories ated. Just as crucially, rather than being
and landscapes, often in zones that are geo- based upon inherited concepts and represen-
graphically removed from large cities, but tations of the urban, such an inquiry would
where new forms of collective insurgency need to illuminate the manifold ways in
are emerging in response to the patterns of which the users of urbanizing spaces
industrial restructuring, territorial enclosure produce and transform their own urban
and landscape reorganization sketched worlds through everyday practices, dis-
above. From Nigeria, South Africa, India courses and struggles, leading to the for-
and China to Brazil, Mexico and northern mation not only of new urban spatial
Canada, new political strategies are being configurations, but of new visions of the
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Brenner, N., J. Peck, and N. Theodore. 2010. Variegated
Angelo, H. and D. Wachsmuth. 2014. Urbanizing Urban Neoliberalization: Geographies, Modalities,
Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Pathways. Global Networks 10 (2): 182 222.
Cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Brugmann, J. 2010. Welcome to the Urban Revolution.
Research. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.12105 New York: Bloomsbury.
Arboleda, M. 2015. Spaces of Extraction, Metropolitan Bunnell, T., and A. Maringanti. 2010. Practicing Urban
Explosions: Planetary Urbanization and the Com- Research Beyond Metrocentricity. International
modity Boom in Latin America. International Journal Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34 (2):
of Urban and Regional Research, forthcoming. 415420.
Archer, M. 2007. Making Our Way Through the World: Burdett, R., and D. Sudjic. 2006. The Endless City. London:
Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. Cambridge: Phaidon.
Cambridge University Press. Burgess, E. (1925) 1967. The Growth of the City: An
Arrighi, G. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century. London: Introduction to a Research Project. In The City, edited
Verso. by R. Park and E. Burgess, 4762. Chicago, IL:
Atkinson, A. 2007. Cities After Oil 1: Sustainable University of Chicago Press.
Development and Energy Futures. City 11 (2): 201 Castells, M. (1972) 1977. The Urban Question: A Marxist
213. Approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Atkinson, A. 2009. Cities After OilOne More Time. Catterall, B. 2014. Towards the Great Transformation:
City 13 (4): 493498. (11) Where/what is Culture in Planetary Urbanis-
Batty, M. 2013. The New Science of Cities. Cambridge, ation?. Towards a New Paradigm. City 18 (3):
MA: MIT Press. 368379.
Bayat, A., and E. Denis. 2000. Who is Afraid of Ash- Catterall, B., and M. Wilson. 2014. Introducing and
waiyyat?. Urban Change and Politics in Egypt. Resituating a Debate About Planetary Urbanis-
Environment and Urbanization 12 (2): 185 199. ation. CITY. virtual special issue, Reclaim the city
Bettencourt, L., and G. West. 2010. A Unified Theory of and the planet. Accessed December 20, 2014.
Urban Living. Nature 467: 912 913. http://www.city-analysis.net/2014/08/18/
Bourdieu, P. 1990. In Other Words: Essays Towards a introducing-and-resituating-a-debate-about-
Reflexive Sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer- planetary-urbanisation/
sity Press. Chakrabarty, D. 2009. The Climate of History: Four
Braudel, F. 1984. The Perspective of the World. Translated Theses. Critical Inquiry 35: 197222.
by Sia n Reynolds. Berkeley, CA: University of Chibber, V. 2013. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of
California Press. Capital. London: Verso.
Brenner, N. 2004. New State Spaces: Urban Governance Cloke, P. 2006. Conceptualizing Rurality. In Handbook
and the Rescaling of Statehood. New York: Oxford of Rural Studiesm, edited by P. Cloke, T. Marsden and
University Press. P. Mooney, 18 28. London: Sage.
Brenner, N. 2009. What is Critical Urban Theory? City Cronon, W. 1991. Natures Metropolis: Chicago and the
13 (2 3): 195204. Great West. New York: Norton.
Brenner, N. 2013. Theses on Urbanization. Public Cul- Crutzen, P. J. 2002. Geology of Mankind: The Anthro-
ture 25 (1): 85 114. pocene. Nature 415: 23.
Brenner, N., ed. 2014a. Implosions/Explosions: Towards Davis, M. 2006. Planet of Slums. London: Verso.
a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis. Diener, R., J. Herzog, M. Meili, P. de Meuron, and C.
Brenner, N. 2014b. Introduction: Urban Theory Without Schmid. 2006. Switzerland: An Urban Portrait, 1 4.
an Outside. In Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Zurich: ETH Studio Basel, Birkha user.
180 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
Elmqvist, T. 2014. Why We Need an Urban Sustainable Katsikis, N. 2015. From Hinterland to Hinterworld: Terri-
Development Goal. blog entry at http://www. torial Organization Beyond Agglomeration. Doctoral
thenatureofcities.com/2014/03/02/why-we-need- Dissertation, Doctor in Design Studies Program,
an-urban-sustainable-development-goal/, accessed Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.
9 January 2015. Katznelson, I. 1992. Marxism and the City. New York:
Fainstein, S. 2014. Resilience and Justice. Melbourne Oxford University Press.
Sustainable Society Institute Working Paper 2, http:// Kipfer, S., and K. Goonewardena. 2013. Urban Marxism
www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/content/pages/ and the Post-colonial Question: Henri Lefebvre and
mssi-research-paper-susan-s-fainstein-resilience- Colonisation. Historical Materialism 21 (2): 76
and-justice, accessed on 9 January 2015. 116.
Gieryn, T. 2006. City as Truth-Spot: Laboratories and Kra
tke, S. 2014. Cities in Contemporary Capitalism.
Field-Sites in Urban Studies. Social Studies of International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
Science 36 (1): 5 38. 38 (5): 1660 1677.
Girardet, H. 2004. Cities, People, Planet. New York: Lefebvre, H. (1974) 1991. The Production of Space.
Academy Press. Translated by D. Nicholson-Smith. Cambridge:
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
Merrifield, A. 2014. The New Urban Question. London: Global South, edited by S. Parnell and S. Oldfield,
Pluto. 57 70. New York: Routledge.
Meyer, W. 2013. The Environmental Advantages of Cities. Roy, A. 2005. Urban Informality: Toward an Epistem-
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ology of Planning. Journal of the American Planning
Monte-Mor, R. L. M. 2014a. What is the Urban in the Association 71 (2): 147 158.
Contemporary World? In Implosions/Explosions: Roy, A. 2009. The 21st Century Metropolis: New Geo-
Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, edited by graphies of Theory. Regional Studies 43 (6): 819
N. Brenner, 260 267. Berlin: Jovis. 830.
Monte-Mor, R. L. M. 2014b. Extended Urbanization and Roy, A. 2011. Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern
Settlement Patterns: An Environmental Approach. In Urbanism. International Journal of Urban and
Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Regional Research 35 (2): 223 238.
Urbanization, edited by N. Brenner, 109120. Ber- Roy, A. 2014. Worlding the South: Towards a Post-
lin: Jovis. Colonial Urban Theory. In The Routledge Handbook
Moore, J. 2008. Ecological Crises and the Agrarian on Cities of the Global South, edited by S. Parnell and
Question in World-Historical Perspective. Monthly S. Oldfield, 9 20. New York: Routledge.
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
Review 60 (6): 54 63. Roy, A., and A. Ong, eds. 2012. Worlding Cities: Asian
Moore, J. 2011. Transcending the Metabolic Rift: A The- Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Oxford:
ory of Crises in the Capitalist World-Ecology. Journal Wiley-Blackwell.
of Peasant Studies 38 (1): 1 46. Satterthwaite, D., ed. 2004. The Earthscan Reader in
Mostafavi, M., and G. Doherty, eds. 2011. Ecological Sustainable Cities. London: Earthscan.
Urbanism. Zurich: Lars Muller. Satterthwaite, D. 2010. Urban Myths and the Mis-Use of
Notteboom, T. E., and J. P. Rodrigue. 2005. Port Regio- Data That Underpin Them. In Urbanization and
nalization: Towards a New Phase in Port Develop- Development, edited by J. Beall, B. Guha-Khasnobis
ment. Maritime Policy & Management 32 (3): 297 and R. Kanbur, 83 102. Oxford: Oxford University
313. Press.
Parnell, S., and Oldfield, eds. 2014. The Routledge Saunders, P. 1986. Social Theory and the Urban Question.
Handbook on Cities of the Global South. New York: 2nd ed. New York: Holmes & Meier.
Routledge. Schaub, C., and K. dir Musale. 2014. Millons Can Walk.
Parnell, S., and J. Robinson. 2012. (Re)theorizing Cities Documentary film. Zurich: RECK Filmproduction.
from the Global South: Looking Beyond Neoliberal- http://schaubfilm.ch/en/filmography/
ism. Urban Geography 33 (4): 593617. dokumentarfilme/millions-can-walk/synopsis/
Peck, J. 2015a. Uneven Regional Development. In The Schmid, C. 2003. Raum und Regulation. Henri Lefebvre
International Encyclopedia of Geography, edited by und der Regulationsansatz. In Fit fur den Postfordis-
D. Richardson, in press. Cambridge: Wiley-AAG. mus?. Theoretisch-politische Perspektiven des Regu-
Peck, J. 2015b. Cities Beyond Compare? Regional lationsansatzes, edited by U. Brand and W. Raza,
Studies 49 (1): 160182. 217242. Munster: Westfa lisches Dampfboot.
Peck, J., and N. Theodore. 2015. Fast Policy: Experimental Schmid, C. 2005. Stadt, Raum und Gesellschaft: Henri
Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism. Minne- Lefebvre und die Theorie der Produktion des Raumes.
sota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Postone, M. 1993. Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Schmid, C. 2006. Theory. In Switzerland: an urban
Reinterpretation of Karl Marxs Critical Social Theory. portrait, edited by R. Diener, J. Herzog, M. Meili, P. de
New York: Cambridge University Press. Meuron and C. Schmid, 163 224. Vol. 1. Zurich:
Prigge, W. 2008. Reading the Urban Revolution: Space ETH Studio Basel/Birkha user.
and Representation. In Space, Difference, Everyday Schmid, C. 2008. Henri Lefebvres Theory of the Pro-
Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, edited by K. Goone- duction of Space: Towards a Three-Dimensional
wardena, S. Kipfer, R. Milgrom and C. Schmid, 46 Dialectic. In Space, Difference, Everyday Life:
61. London: Routledge. Reading Henri Lefebvre, edited by K. Goonewar-
Rees, W., and M. Wackernagel. 1996. Urban Ecological dena, S. Kipfer, R. Milgrom and C. Schmid, 27 45.
Footprints: Why Cities Cannot be SustainableAnd London: Routledge.
Why they are a Key to Sustainability. Environmental Schmid, C. 2012. Henri Lefebvre, the Right to the City and
Impact Asssessment Review 16: 223 248. the New Metropolitan Mainstream. In Cities for
Robinson, J. 2006. Ordinary Cities. London: Routledge. People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the
Robinson, J. 2011. Cities in a World of Cities: The Right to the City, edited by N. Brenner, P. Marcuse and
Comparative Gesture. International Journal of M. Mayer, 4262. New York: Routledge.
Urban and Regional Research 35 (1): 1 23. Schmid, C. 2013. Afterword: Urbanization as an Open
Robinson, J. 2014. New Geographies of Theorizing the Process. In Torre David Informal Vertical Commu-
Urban: Putting Comparison to Work for Global Urban nities, edited by Urban Think Tank, 384387. Zurich:
Studies. In The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Lars Muller.
182 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 3
Schmid, C. (2012) 2014. Patterns and Pathways of Glo- Storper, M. 1996. The Regional World. New York: Guilford.
bal Urbanization: Towards Comparative Analysis. In Storper, M., and R. Walker. 1989. The Capitalist Impera-
Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary tive: Territory, Technology and Industrial Growth.
Urbanization, edited by N. Brenner, 203217. Ber- Cambridge: Blackwell.
lin: Jovis. Sudjic, D. 1993. The 100-mile City. London: Mariner
Schmid, C. 2015a. Specificity and UrbanizationA Books.
Theoretical Outlook. In The Inevitable Specificity of Taylor, P. J., and R. E. Lang. 2004. The Shock of the New:
Cities, edited by ETH Studio Basel, 287307. Zurich: 100 Concepts Describing Recent Urban Change.
Lars Muller. Environment and Planning A 36: 951 958.
Schmid, C. 2015b. The Trouble with Henri: Urban Thompson, E., T. Bunnell, and D. Parthasarathy, eds.
Research and the Theory of the Production of Space. 2013. Cleavage, Connection and Conflict in Rural,
In Urban Revolution Now: Henri Lefebvre in Social Urban and Contemporary Asia. Dordrecht:
Research and Architecture, edited by . Stanek, C. Springer.
Schmid and A . Moravanszky, 2748. Farnham: Topalovic, M., M. Knusel, and M. Ja ggi. 2013. Architec-
Ashgate. ture of Territory: Singapore, Johor, Riau. Zurich/Sin-
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 09:43 03 April 2015
Schmid, C., . Stanek, and A. Moravanszky. 2015. The- gapore: ETH Future Cities Laboratory.
ory, not Method Thinking with Lefebvre. In Urban Townsend, A. 2013. Smart Cities. New York: Norton.
Revolution Now: Henri Lefebvre in Social Research UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlement Pro-
and Architecture, edited by . Stanek, C. Schmid and gramme). (2007). The State of the Worlds Cities
A . Moravanszky, 1 24. Farnham: Ashgate. Report 2006/2007. London: Earthscan.
Scott, A. J. 1988. New Industrial Spaces. London: Pion. Urban Theory Lab. 2015. Extreme Territories of Urbaniz-
Scott, J. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anar- ation. Research report. Cambridge, MA: Urban The-
chist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, ory Lab, Graduate School of Design, Harvard
CT: Yale University Press. University (urbantheorylab.net).
Scott, A. J., and M. Storper. 2014. The Nature of Cities: Veltz, P. 1996. Mondialisation, villes et territoires: Lecon-
The Limits and Scope of Urban Theory. International omie darchipel. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
Journal of Urban and Regional Research. doi:10. France.
1111/1468-2427.12134 Wachsmuth, D. 2014. City as Ideology: Reconciling the
Seekings, J. 2013. Urban Theory: The Dream and its Explosion of the City Form with the Tenacity of the City
limits. Plenary lecture. International Journal of Concept. Environment and Planning D: Society and
Urban and Regional Research, annual Space 32 (1): 7590.
conference of Research Committee 21 (RC21) of Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System
the International Sociological Association, Berlin, I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the Euro-
August. pean World-Economy in Sixteenth Century.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. 2014. Urbs in Rure: Historical New York: Academic Publishers.
Enclosure and Extended Urbanization in the Coun- Wilson, J. 2014. Plan Puebla Panama: The Violence of
tryside. In Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study Abstract Space. In Urban Revolution Now: Henri
of Planetary Urbanization, edited by N. Brenner, Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture,
236 259. Berlin: Jovis. edited by . Stanek, C. Schmid and A . Moravanszky,
Sheppard, E. 2009. The Spaces and Times of Globali- 113130. Farnham: Ashgate.
zation: Place, Scale, Networks and Positionality. Wolfrum, S., W. Nerdinger, and S. Schaubeck, eds. 2008.
Economic Geography 78 (3): 307 330. Multiple City: Urban Concepts, 1908 2008. Berlin:
Sheppard, E., H. Leitner, and A. Maringanti. 2013. Pro- Jovis.
vincializing Global Urbanism: A Manifesto. Urban Woods, M. 2009. Rural Geography: Blurring Boundaries
Geography 34 (7): 893 900. and Making Connections. Progress in Human
Simone, A. M. 2009. City life from Jakarta to Dakar. Geography 33 (6): 849 858.
London: Routledge.
Slater, T. 2014. The Resilience of Neoliberal Urbanism.
Open Democracy, Accessed January 9, 2015. Neil Brenner is based at the Urban Theory
https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/ Lab, Graduate School of Design, Harvard
tom-slater/resilience-of-neoliberal-urbanism University. Email: nbrenner@gsd.harvard.edu
Soja, E. 2000. Postmetropolis. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Soja, E., and J. Kanai. (2006) 2014. The Urbanization of
the World. In Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Christian Schmid is Chair of Sociology,
Study of Planetary Urbanization, edited by N. Bren- Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich.
ner, 142 159. Berlin: Jovis. Email: schmid@arch.ethz.ch