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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
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
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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.
the neighborhood to the planetary. include, among others: (a) the unprece-
Under these conditions, new approaches dented densification of inter-metropo-
to understanding and influencing pro- litan networks, requiring colossally
cesses of uneven spatial development scaled infrastructural investments
under capitalism are urgently needed (from highways, canals, railways, con-
(Peck 2015a). tainer ports, airports and hydroelectric
(2) The basic nature of urban realities— dams to undersea cables, tunnels, pipe-
long understood under the singular, lines and satellite fleets) stretching
encompassing rubric of ‘cityness’—has across territories and continents as
become more differentiated, poly- well as oceanic and atmospheric
morphic, variegated and multiscalar environments; (b) the restructuring
than in previous cycles of capitalist and repositioning of traditional ‘hin-
urbanization. Even though the terlands’ through the installation of
phrase, ‘the city’, persists as an ideo- new export processing zones, global
logical framing in mainstream policy sweatshop regions, back office
discourse and everyday life (Wachs- locations, data processing facilities and
muth 2014), the contemporary urban intermodal logistics terminals; (c) the
phenomenon cannot be understood as remaking and spatial extension of
a singular condition derived from the large-scale land-use systems devoted
serial replication of a specific sociospa- to resource extraction, the production
tial condition (e.g. agglomeration) or and circulation of energy (including
settlement type (e.g. places with large, fossil fuels), and water and waste man-
dense and/or heterogeneous popu- agement; (d) the profound social and
lations) across the territory. Indeed, environmental transformation of vast,
rather than witnessing the worldwide erstwhile ‘rural’ areas through the
proliferation of a singular urban form, expansion of large-scale industrial agri-
‘the’ city, we are instead confronted culture, the extension of global agro-
with new processes of urbanization business networks, and the imposition
that are bringing forth diverse socio- of associated forms of land grabbing
economic conditions, territorial for- and territorial enclosure; and (e) the
mations and socio-metabolic operationalization of erstwhile ‘wilder-
transformations across the planet. ness’ spaces, including the rainforests,
Their morphologies, geographies and deserts, alpine regions, polar zones,
institutional frames have become so the oceans and even the atmosphere
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 153
dinated imperial systems. Since that and gentrification over job creation,
period, including within major social redistribution, equity and par-
empires and colonial regimes, national ticipation (Schmid 2012); (e) the con-
states instrumentalized major urban struction of new forms of inter-local
regions in relation to the broader networking and policy transfer to dis-
project of establishing territorially seminate putative ‘best practices’ in
integrated markets and creating rela- response to persistent social, economic
tively uniform, standardized frame- and environmental crises within
works of national territorial urban regions (Peck and Theodore
organization within which industrial 2015); and (f) the ongoing explosion of
development could unfold. However, political struggles over access to the
the tumultuous transformations of basic resources of social reproduction
recent decades decisively shattered this such as housing, water, food, edu-
entrenched national-developmentalist cation, health care and security.
model of urban and territorial regu- Under these conditions, diverse regu-
lation, leading to a significant reconsti- latory agencies, coalitions, movements
tution of inherited geographies of and actors struggle not only to influ-
urban governance (Brenner 2004; ence the production of places, but to
Schmid 2003). reshape the broader institutional and
Although some of its elements have territorial frameworks through which
longer historical lineages, including urbanization processes are being
within mercantile capitalism and the managed at every spatial scale.
colonial empires of high industrial
capitalism, the contemporary period The terrain of the urban has thus been sub-
has seen the proliferation of new geo- jected to a high-intensity, high-impact earth-
graphies of urban governance that are quake through the worldwide social,
no longer neatly subsumed within a economic, regulatory and environmental
singular, encompassing territorial fra- transformations of the post-1980s period.
mework of state power at any spatial Not surprisingly, in conjunction with
scale, national or otherwise. Instead, ongoing efforts to decipher these wide-
an intensely variegated, polarized, mul- ranging transformations, the field of urban
tiscalar and relatively uncoordinated studies has also been experiencing consider-
landscape of territorial and networked able turbulence and fragmentation. In an
governance has emerged through (a) apparent parallel to the field-transforming
154 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 – 3
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 question—the urban region or agglomera-
research and quantitative urban geography, tion—as 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.
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.
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Today, however, the intense fragmentation, Today, this entrenched set of assump-
disorientation and downright confusion that tions—along 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 tion—is 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; Krätke 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- city—along with those of larger, metropolitan
temic crises of urban studies involved foun- units of agglomeration—are 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 type—the 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
been relativized, if not superseded. research, the mainstream of contemporary
For this reason, we argue, the question of discourses on global urbanism has embraced
the epistemology of the urban—specifically: a strong, even triumphalist, reassertion of a
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through what categories, methods and carto- traditional, universal, totalizing and largely
graphies should urban life be understood?— empiricist concept of ‘the city’. Within this
must once again become a central focal mainstream framework, the nature of con-
point for urban theory, research and action. temporary urban restructuring is narrated
If the urban is no longer coherently contained simply as an increasing importance of cities
within or anchored to the city—or, for that to worldwide social, economic, political and
matter, to any other bounded settlement ecological processes. The question of what
type—then how can a scholarly field ‘cities’ and the ‘urban’ are, and how their
devoted to its investigation continue to constitutive properties and geographies may
exist? Or, to pose the same question as a chal- be changing in qualitative terms, is thereby
lenge of intellectual reconstruction: is there— effectively ‘black-boxed’.
could there be—a new epistemology of the The most influential contemporary meta-
urban that might illuminate the emergent narrative of the global urban condition is
conditions, processes and transformations surely the notion of an ‘urban age’, which
associated with a world of generalized was first introduced several decades ago by
urbanization? United Nations (UN) demographers, and
which has more recently been popularized
in public and scholarly discourses on the
Urban ideologies, old and new growth of urban settlements and associated
social, regulatory and environmental
Some four decades ago, Lefebvre ([1970] hazards (Burdett and Sudjic 2006; Davis
2003, 191, n. 3) argued not only that a new 2006; UN-Habitat 2007). According to this
understanding of the urban was required, city-centric perspective, for the first time in
but that the urban was itself becoming the human history, more than half the world’s
episteme of our time, the condition of possi- population now lives within cities. With the
bility for understanding major aspects of putative crossing of this ‘threshold’ or ‘mile-
contemporary global economic, social stone’ in 2007, the city is said to have been
and political life: ‘We can say that the urban generalized into the universal form of
[ . . . ] rises above the horizon, slowly human settlement; it is now thought to rep-
occupies an epistemological field, and resent the most elemental spatial unit for
becomes the episteme of an epoch’ (for humanity’s future. Across otherwise diverse
further discussion, see also Prigge 2008). In discursive, ideological and institutional con-
this sense, Lefebvre suggested, the reconcep- texts, the urban age thesis has become a
tualization of the urban was becoming an form of doxic common sense framing
156 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 – 3
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-
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-
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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 UN’s 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 humanity’s 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-
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
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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
respond to, there is much less agreement than ideology. In Archer’s (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
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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 descriptions—for
temporary approaches that pursue ontologi- instance, of everyday life and subaltern
cal or quasi-metaphysical speculations struggle—as 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
concrete research (on specific contexts, reflexive counterpoint to mainstream global
struggles and transformations). It is thus in urban ideologies. However, they also contain
a spirit of comradely dialogue that we offer certain intellectual hazards, not the least of
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below our own set of critical reflections on which is the risk of prematurely retreating
the possible foundations for a new epistem- from essential conceptual tools, such as those
ology of the urban under 21st-century con- of geopolitical economy, state theory and
ditions. However, despite our shared regulation theory, as outdated vestiges of
commitment to epistemological reflexivity ‘northern’ epistemologies (see also Mabin
and conceptual reinvention, several of the 2014). The idea of specificity is logically intel-
theses presented here stand in some measure ligible only in relation to an encompassing
of tension with certain methodological ten- notion of generality against which it is
dencies within postcolonial urban studies. defined; it is thus best understood as a rela-
First, because of its concern to ‘provincia- tional, dialectical concept, one that presup-
lize’ the universalizing, (over)generalizing poses a broader totality, rather than as a
thrust of ‘northern’ theory, much of postco- demarcation of ontological singularity
lonial urban studies has emphasized the (Schmid 2015a). In a capitalist world system
specificity, distinctiveness or even uniqueness that continues to be shaped profoundly by
of cities beyond the West. Although several the drive towards endless capital accumu-
scholars (e.g. Roy 2009, 2014; Robinson lation, by neoliberalizing and/or authoritarian
2011, 2014) have recently introduced produc- forms of global and national regulatory
tively relational concepts designed to illumi- restructuring, by neo-imperial military strat-
nate inter-place transformations, the trope egies, and by various interconnected forms of
of contextual specificity pervades much of exploitation, dispossession and socio-environ-
contemporary postcolonial urban research, mental destruction, contextual specificity is
in part due to the influence of parallel argu- enmeshed within, and mediated through,
ments in the fields of subaltern historical broader configurations of capitalist uneven
studies and postcolonial cultural theory spatial development and geopolitical power.
(Chibber 2013). The appropriately decon- This ‘context of context’ (Brenner, Peck, and
structive concern to ‘speak back against, Theodore 2010; Peck 2015b) is not merely a
thereby contesting, mainstream global urban- background condition for urban development,
ism’ (Sheppard, Leitner, and Maringanti but represents a constitutive formation—a
2013, 896) thus often translates into a meth- self-forming, internally contradictory and
odological injunction to reveal the distinc- constantly evolving whole—in and through
tiveness of particular places within the which the ‘geo-positionality’ of local places
‘global South’, often in rhetorical contrast to is inscribed and mediated (Sheppard 2009).
a putatively overgeneralized ‘northern’ Theorizing the production of such multi-
model, such as that of the global or neoliberal layered spatial configurations—not only
162 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 – 3
contexts, but the context(s) of those con- In effect, even though a ‘southern’ lens is
texts—in 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 units—the 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
‘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 ments—upon which the inherited field of
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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 diverge—namely, 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 urbanization’—understood 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 ‘cityness’—must 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
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
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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’ outside—the development. The recognition of context
suburban, the rural, the natural or otherwise. dependency—the need to ‘provincialize’
In this sense, rather than developing through urban theory—thus 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
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.
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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
studies has long been preoccupied with the
task of classifying particular sociospatial con-
Thesis 2: the urban is a process, not a ditions within putatively distinct types of
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universal form, settlement type or bounded settlement space (city, town, suburb, metro-
unit polis and various sub-classifications
thereof). Today, however, such typologies
Across significant strands of the social of urban settlement have outlived their use-
sciences and the design disciplines, the fulness; processes of sociospatial transform-
urban is treated as a fixed, unchanging ation, which crisscross and constantly
entity – as a universal form, settlement type rework diverse places, territories and scales,
or bounded spatial unit (‘the’ city) that is must instead be moved to the foreground of
being replicated across the globe. By contrast, our epistemological framework. In such a
following Lefebvre’s ([1970] 2003) methodo- conceptualization, urban configurations
logical injunction, we interpret the urban as a must be conceived not as discrete settlement
multiscalar process of sociospatial transform- types, but as dynamic, relationally evolving
ation. The study of specific urban forms, force fields of sociospatial restructuring
types or units must thus be superseded by (Allen, Cochrane, and Massey 1998; Massey
investigations of the relentless ‘churning’ of 2005). As such, urban configurations rep-
urban configurations at all spatial scales. resent, simultaneously, the territorial inheri-
This apparently simple proposal entails a tance of earlier rounds of restructuring and
series of far-reaching consequences for the sociospatial frameworks in and through
many of the core epistemological operations which future urban pathways and potentials
of urban theory and research. are produced. The typological classification
First, the urban can no longer be under- of static urban units is thus considerably
stood as a universal form. Apparently stabil- less productive, in both analytical and politi-
ized urban sites are in fact merely cal terms, than explorations of the various
temporary materializations of ongoing socio- processes through which urban configur-
spatial transformations. Such processes of ations are produced, contested and
creative destruction (see Thesis 3 below) do transformed.
not simply unfold within fixed or stable Third, the urban can no longer be under-
urban ‘containers’, but actively produce, stood as a bounded spatial unit. Since the
unsettle and rework them, and thus con- origins of modern approaches to urban
stantly engender new urban configurations. theory in the late 19th century, the urban
Simply put, the urban is not a (fixed) form has been conceptualized with reference to
but a process; as such, it is dynamic, histori- the growth of cities, conceived as relatively
cally evolving and variegated. It is materia- circumscribed, if constantly expanding,
lized within built environments and sociospatial units. Such assumptions have
166 CITY VOL. 19, NOS. 2 – 3
metropolitan region or otherwise); nor can urbanization with exclusive reference to the
its territorial contours be coherently deli- condition of agglomeration, the spatial
neated relative to some postulated non- concentration of population, means of
urban ‘outside’ (suburban, rural, natural, production, infrastructure and investment
wilderness or otherwise). Conceptualizations within a more or less clearly delineated
of the urban as a bounded spatial unit must spatial zone.
thus be superseded by approaches that inves- Without denying the importance of spatial
tigate how urban configurations are churned clusters to urbanization processes, we argue
and remade across the uneven landscapes of that a more multifaceted conceptualization
worldwide capitalist development. is today required which illuminates the inter-
In sum, the process-based approach to the play between three mutually constitutive
urban proposed here requires a fundamental moments—(i) concentrated urbanization, (ii)
reorientation of urban research. No longer extended urbanization and (iii) differential
conceived as a form, type or bounded unit, urbanization. These three moments are dia-
the urban must now be retheorized as a lectically interconnected and mutually con-
process that, even while continually rein- stitutive; they are analytically distinguished
scribing patterns of agglomeration across here simply to offer an epistemological basis
the earth’s terrestrial landscape, simul- for a reinvented conceptualization that trans-
taneously transgresses, explodes and cends the limitations and blind spots of main-
reworks inherited geographies (of social stream models.
interaction, settlement, land use, circulation Since Friedrich Engels famously analyzed
and socio-metabolic organization), both the explosive growth of industrial Manche-
within and beyond large-scale metropolitan ster in the mid-19th century, the power of
centers. agglomeration has been a key focal point for
urban research. Although its appropriate
interpretation remains a topic of intense
Thesis 3: urbanization involves three debate, the moment of concentrated urbaniz-
mutually constitutive moments— ation is thus quite familiar from inherited
concentrated urbanization, extended approaches to urban economic geography,
urbanization and differential urbanization which aim to illuminate the agglomeration
processes through which firms, workers and
If the urban is no longer to be conceived as a infrastructure cluster together in space
universal form, as a specific settlement type during successive cycles of capitalist indus-
or as a bounded unit, inherited understandings trial development (Veltz 1996; Storper 1996;
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 167
Scott 1988; Krätke 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)
of urban transformation encompass much through which non-commodified modes of
broader, if massively uneven, territories and social life are destabilized and articulated to
landscapes, including many that may global spatial divisions of labor and systems
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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-
are continually creatively destroyed in arily to internalize the underlying contradic-
relation to the broader developmental tions of capitalism associated, for instance,
dynamics and crisis-tendencies of modern with class struggle, property relations, over-
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capitalism. Lefebvre ([1970] 2003) captured accumulation and the political control of
this distinctive tendency within capitalist surplus value. To the degree that inherited
forms of urbanization through the vivid built environments can no longer effectively
metaphor of ‘implosion-explosion’, a formu- manage the struggles and conflicts engen-
lation that has been appropriated in diverse dered through such contradictions, it is
ways in recent years by critical urban thin- argued, they are radically remade, or crea-
kers (Brenner 2014a, 2014b; Schmid, Stanek, tively destroyed, until a new formation of
and Moravánszky 2015). For our purposes the urban is produced. In this sense, despite
here, rather than equate ‘implosion’ exclu- major disagreements regarding the under-
sively with concentrated urbanization and lying causes of crisis-induced urban restruc-
‘explosion’ with extended urbanization, the turing, radical theories of the capitalist city
metaphor offers a useful basis for demarcat- have already developed a relatively elaborate
ing a third, differential moment of urbaniz- account of the interplay between concen-
ation based upon the perpetual drive to trated and differential urbanization since
restructure sociospatial organization under around 1850 (Soja 2000).
modern capitalism, not only within metropo- By contrast, we currently have only a
litan agglomerations but across broader land- limited grasp of how—via what mechanisms,
scapes of extended urbanization. struggles, patterns and pathways—the land-
Consistent with the process-based concep- scapes of extended urbanization have been
tualization of the urban presented in Thesis 2, creatively destroyed during the history of
the differential moment of urbanization puts capitalist development, whether in relation
into relief the intense, perpetual dynamism to waves of concentrated urbanization or,
of capitalist forms of urbanization, in which more generally, in relation to broader
sociospatial configurations are tendentially regimes of capital accumulation and modes
established, only to be rendered obsolete of territorial regulation. The cycles of urban
and eventually superseded through the development explored by radical scholars
relentless forward motion of the accumu- under the rubric, for instance, of the mercan-
lation process and industrial development tile, industrial, Fordist-Keynesian and neo-
(Harvey 1985; Storper and Walker 1989). liberal city (Harvey 1989) have only rarely
Just as crucially, as we suggest below been connected, either empirically or analyti-
(Thesis 7), differential urbanization is also cally, to the sociospatial dynamics and crisis-
the result of various forms of urban struggle tendencies within the broader landscapes of
and expresses the powerful potentials for extended urbanization (for some suggestive
radical social and political transformation openings, however, see Jones 1997; Bayat
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 169
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
have been intensifying, deepening and broad-
ening around the world since the long 1980s, Thesis 4: the fabric of urbanization is
with far-reaching social, environmental and multidimensional
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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
general processes of capitalist industrializ- 1970s, require further investigation and
ation and world market expansion that have interpretation. In contrast to inherited peri-
been investigated by economic historians odizations, which focus almost exclusively
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and historical sociologists of capitalist devel- on cities and urban form, the framework pro-
opment (e.g. Wallerstein 1974; Braudel 1984; posed here would permit the dynamics of city
Arrighi 1994). As understood here, urbaniz- growth during each period to be analyzed in
ation is indeed linked to these processes, but direct relation to the production and recon-
its specificity lies precisely in materializing stitution of historically and geographically
the latter within places, territories and land- specific operational landscapes (mediated
scapes, and in embedding them within con- through Empire, colonialism, neo-colonial-
crete, temporarily stabilized configurations ism and various forms of enclosure and
of socioeconomic life, socio-environmental accumulation by dispossession) that sup-
organization and regulatory management. ported the latter.
Capitalist industrial development does not For present purposes, we focus on the con-
engender urban growth and restructuring on temporary formation of urbanization. In our
an untouched terrestrial surface; rather, it view, a genuinely planetary formation of
constantly collides with, and reorganizes, urbanization began to emerge following the
inherited sociospatial configurations, includ- long 1980s, the transitional period of crisis-
ing those produced directly through the induced global restructuring that began with
social relations and political forms of capital- the deconstruction of Fordist-Keynesian
ism. Urbanization is precisely the medium and national-developmentalist regimes of
and expression of this collision/transform- accumulation in the early 1970s and contin-
ation, and every configuration of urban life ued until the withering away of state social-
is powerfully shaped by the diverse social, ism and the collapse of the Soviet Union in
political and institutional forces that the late 1980s and early 1990s. These develop-
mediate it. ments established some of the basic con-
ditions for the subsequent planetary
extension of the urban fabric during the last
Thesis 5: urbanization has become two decades—the deregulation of the global
planetary financial system and of various national regu-
latory systems; the neoliberalization of
Since the first wave of capitalist industrializ- global, national and local economic govern-
ation in the 19th century, the functional ance; the worldwide digital revolution; the
borders, catchment areas and immediate hin- flexibilization of production processes and
terlands of urban regions have been extended the generalization of global production net-
outwards to create ever larger regional units. works; and the creation of new forms of
Just as importantly, however, this dramatic market-oriented territorial regulation at
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 173
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 Sudjic’s (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
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 world’s 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-Mór through monodimensional or formalistic
2014a, 2014b). Such studies strongly reinforce interpretive frames, capitalist urbanization
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-
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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-
durée 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-
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
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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 Lefebvre’s
generated through the ‘productive force’ of ([1968] 1996) classic concept of the ‘right to
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-
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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 reframed—for, 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 cities—and 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 experimentation—in 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
constructed by peasants, workers, indigenous potentials being produced and claimed
peoples and other displaced populations to through their activities (INURA 1998).
oppose the infrastructuralization and enclo- The urban is a collective project—it is pro-
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sure of their everyday social spaces and the duced through collective action, negotiation,
destruction of their established forms of live- imagination, experimentation and struggle.
lihood (see, e.g. Alton 2014; Wilson 2014; The urban society is thus never an achieved
Arboleda 2015; and the documentary film, condition, but offers an open horizon in
Millions Can Walk, Schaub and Musale relation to which concrete struggles over the
2014). The politics of anti-gentrification urban are waged. It is through such struggles,
movements and resistance to corporate ultimately, that any viable new urban epis-
mega-projects in dense city cores can temology will be forged.
thereby be connected, both analytically and
politically, to mobilizations against land
enclosure, large-scale infrastructures (dams, Acknowledgements
highways, pipelines, industrial corridors,
mines) and displacement in seemingly This paper has benefited substantially from
‘remote’ regions (on which, see Merrifield’s the generosity of several friends and col-
[2014] analysis of ‘neo- leagues, who offered us exhaustive, provoca-
Haussmannization’). Rather than rejecting tive and challenging comments on a draft.
urban life, such mobilizations are often Particular thanks are due to Hillary Angelo,
demanding a more socially equitable, demo- Bob Catterall, Ozan Karaman, Nikos Katsi-
cratically managed and environmentally kis, David Madden, Margit Mayer, Jamie
sane form of urbanization than that Peck, Jennifer Robinson, Monika Streule,
being imposed by the forces of neoliberal Nik Theodore and David Wachsmuth. We
capitalism. have done our best to address their wide-
The concept of planetary urbanization pro- ranging concerns, objections and counterar-
posed here offers no more than an epistemo- guments, but many issues raised in this
logical orientation through which to begin to paper necessarily require further clarification
decipher such struggles, their interconnec- and elaboration elsewhere. We assume full
tions across places, territories and landscapes, responsibility for the arguments presented
and the urban potentials they are claiming, here.
articulating and constantly transforming.
Such an investigation remains to be under-
taken, but the epistemological perspective Disclosure statement
proposed here requires that it be framed in
a manner that attempts to overcome the com- No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
partmentalization and fragmentation not authors.
BRENNER AND SCHMID: TOWARDS A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE URBAN? 179
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