PLANETARY URBANIZATION AND IMPERIALISM: A View from Guåhan/Guam

Through this article I contribute to debates about planetary urbanization by specifying how imperialism, defined as states restricting the self-determination of other states or peoples, intersects with urbanization. While recent urban theory has explored how urbanization unfolds at scales beyond the city and in relation to global capital accumulation, it has not fully extended these insights to incorporate the central role of states and imperialism. First, I argue that doing so develops a more expansive account of extended urbanization by revealing how networks of military bases are themselves enmeshed in the production of urban networks via state policies, and that militarized sites safeguard the global capitalist economy that sustains urbanization. Secondly, I argue that imperialism changes concentrated urbanization by restricting self-determination, fomenting spatial formations that prioritize militarism, and shifting urban politics to a larger scale. I show these dynamics through a historical analysis of the US military's strategic interest in the island of Guåhan/Guam at the end of the second world war, and then generalize from this case to consider variegated outcomes at the intersections of urbanization and imperialism. In the article I aim to more adequately explain the heterogenous ways urbanization unfolds across the contemporary world.     

Animating the Urban Vortex: New Sociological Urgencies

The current era of global urbanization is defined by a convergence of economic and political crises requiring urgent sociological reflection on the meaning of the ‘urban' today. This article responds to the current rethinking of worldwide processes of urbanization sparked off by Brenner, and Brenner and Schmid, arguing for a renewed sociological approach to urban formations that probes beyond the economic logic of urban ‘de‐territorialization', towards the capricious life‐worlds and forms of planetary organization that define the urban. We pursue a theory of the ‘urban vortex' to capture the maelstrom of disorienting crises since 2008, and explicate the social formations implicated in the construction, materialization and practice of power and transgression in cities today. Our aim is to consider what forms of social change emerge in volatile, intense and centralized dynamics (the urban vortex), and how this might relate to arrangements of interconnectivity, particularity and variegation (the planetary). The article highlights three prominent processes of urban social formation: accumulation, stratification and hyper‐diversity—reinstating the need to theorize the centrality of the city within the formations of twenty‐first century capitalism.     

Assemblages of Urban Leisure Culture in Inner‐City Bucharest

Inner‐city redevelopment in the south‐eastern European metropolis of Bucharest has been an intriguing object of analysis. Having been neglected for a long time by its inhabitants, urban politics and the local economy, the historical inner city recently experienced tremendous development of its evening/night‐time economy and leisure culture, as though it had received fresh impulses from European integration. However, there is no single cause which effected this unexpected proliferation. Therefore, this article traces the contingent ways in which the inner city has been affected, mainly through an empirical reconstruction of socio‐material assemblages of inner‐city leisure culture. A typology of (partial) assemblages is developed, which illustrates the heterogeneity, contingency and changeability of emerging temporary relations between various social, material and ideational elements. We demonstrate how localism and internal replication of limited business concepts have triggered the selective adaptation of various symbols of modernization. Against this background we argue that post‐transformational urbanity involves contingent social self‐referencing and socio‐material assemblage, rather than the adoption of prevailing translocal models of urban development. A critical reassessment of assemblage theory, as applied to this particular urban context, leads to final considerations concerning possible theoretical readjustments.     

Urban Infrastructure,Imagination and Politics: from the Networked Metropolis to the Smart City

This article argues for the importance of social imagination in the understanding of urban infrastructures, especially those designed and built by engineers. It begins by defining social imagination as image‐based systems of representation and values that are shared by various collective stakeholders concerned with infrastructure, such as engineers, but also politicians, administrators, operators, maintenance technicians and indeed users, and then introduces a tripartite model of infrastructure. Infrastructure is interpreted as the result of the interactions between a material basis, professional organizations and stabilized socio‐technical practices, and social imagination. The notion of network is interpreted from such a perspective. Its dependence on imagination is outlined. Through two case studies, the nineteenth‐century networked metropolis, epitomized by Haussmann's Paris, and the rise of the contemporary smart city perspective, the role of social imagination in the conception of urban infrastructure is analyzed further. What seems at stake in the transition towards the smart city is the increased importance given to occurrences, events and scenarios as the basis for urban infrastructure regulation.     

Urban Operating Systems: Diagramming the City

A set of software/hardware packages developed by IT companies for the urban market is transforming the way in which cities are imagined and configured. These urban operating systems (Urban OS) embody important presumptions about what constitutes appropriate knowledge and forms of decision making, pointing to how novel forms of ‘smart' or ‘computational' urbanism may govern urban life. Arguing that an analysis of the interface between the urban and IT requires a broader historical and theoretical perspective, the article traces the ways in which the city has been diagrammed as a space of power since the nineteenth century and highlights the antecedents of Urban OS present across different domains of life—particularly in military and corporate enterprises. Relaying the urban as an efficient logistical enterprise, and operating as a piloting device (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), the Urban OS appears as an emerging urban diagram introducing an informational diagrammatic of control. We focus on five archetypal framings of how Urban OS envision the city, illustrating how a new corporate rationality of control based on functional simplification and heterogeneous reintegration seeks to take hold in the city (via re‐engineering, agility, modularity, flexibility and configurability).     

The Eurozone Crisis and Emerging‐Market Expansion: Capital Switching and the Uneven Geographies of Spanish Urbanization

The theory of capitalist urbanization posits that the built form serves as a crucial sink through which overaccumulated capital is ‘switched' from industrial production into long‐term investment in urban infrastructure. Since Harvey's (1978) deployment of the theory, researchers have attempted to empirically substantiate the switching thesis with limited success. Christophers (2011) revisited the debate with new data and methods to support the claim that significant investment had switched into the built environment at the onset of the 2007/08 financial crisis. However, Christophers' study overlooks how crises are also geographically displaced. This article analyses Spanish trade data for the years 1993 to 2013, the years prior and subsequent to the housing‐induced economic crisis (1997 to 2006). Two studies are undertaken. The first replicates Christophers' methodology to assess how and to what extent a sectoral switch into property investment occurred in Spain between 1997 and 2006. The second modifies the methodology to investigate the extent to which overaccumulated capital in Spain has been geographically displaced through investment in the Moroccan building industry since 2006. These approaches situate uneven development (geographical switching) and turnover time (sectoral switching) as the twin dynamics through which capitalist urbanization is spatio‐temporally fixed.     

提高城镇体系规划编制的科学性和可操作性

随着我国城市化的加速发展,大城市的某些功能正在迅速地向周边郊县扩散,沿海一带城乡之间、城市建成区与非建成区之间的界线日趋模糊。另外,在市场化和经济全球化的大背景下,城市和国家间的竞争已经突出地表现为以中心城市为核心与其周边城镇共同构成的城市区域之间的竞争。基于这些观点,从分析我国城镇体系规划的问题着手,提出提高此类规划科学性和可操作性的若干对策。     

Beyond a Liberal Critique of ‘Trickle Down': Urban Planning in the City of Malmö

This article scrutinizes the much used, but less examined, concept of ‘trickle down' in an urban setting. We make a distinction between the production of and distribution in the city, and argue that trickle down in contemporary urban policy could be regarded as the liberal link between production and distribution. Based on interviews with key figures and document analyses, we look at the transformation of the Swedish city of Malmö from an industrial to a post‐industrial city, where, during the last two decades, we have found three concurrent components: the ideology of trickle down; several urban policy programs and governmental policies to ‘make' money and resources trickle down; as well as increased economic polarization and segregation. A liberal critique of trickle down would argue that market mechanisms cannot by themselves solve distribution, and that government policies therefore are needed. We argue for the need to go beyond a liberal critique of trickle down and stress how unequal distribution is built into the unequal production of the city.     

The Urbanization of Nature in a (Post)Socialist Metropolis: An Urban Political Ecology of Allotment Gardening

In this article we explore how nature becomes part of the city through the example of allotment gardening in the city of Prague, in the Czech Republic. Prague allotments were established based on an ongoing political-ecological process of urbanization of nature that was locally driven by socialist (from 1948 to 1989) and later neoliberal governance. We employ a situated urban political ecology (UPE) approach to analyse changes in the planning of allotments and the impact thereof on the experience of gardeners. This double focus allows us to uncover the effects of neoliberalization on the processes of production of urban nature in respect of both policy and everyday practice. We contrast contemporary capitalist urbanization with its socialist predecessor by showing the immediate effects of the acceptance of neoliberal modes of governance on allotments, urban nature and the understanding of the city. We open allotments as a terrain for UPE to turn attention to the (uneven) production of urban nature in a post-socialist context that has thus far been largely absent from the UPE literature. We demonstrate that post-socialist urbanization is a fruitful terrain that offers new opportunities to unmask the effects of neoliberalization on the production of uneven urban space and thus improves our understanding of contemporary uneven urbanisms.     

现代田园城市:统筹城乡发展的一种新模式——以成都为例

田园城市理论是19世纪人们对城市化进程中城乡关系问题的一种反思,它曾为近代中国的市政学者所倡导。当前我国的城市发展同样面临着城乡二元对立的困境。成都在探索统筹城乡发展方面积累了不少经验,并适时提出了构建现代田园城市的目标。现代田园城市建设内容十分丰富,是统筹城乡发展的一种新模式。     

面对全球化过程中台北市的都市现实

在 2 1世纪开始的此时此刻 ,全世界的城市和社会都共同正在经历一个在我们自身结构内的巨大历史性转化。在这样的转化核心环绕着资讯技术所组织起来的技术革命。立基于新技术的基础设施 ,经济与传播的全球化过程已改变了我们生产、消费、管理、告知和思考的方式。所有层级的策略性支配的活动 ,都是在全球决策和交换网络中被组织 ,从金融市场到视听讯息 ,世界是不对称地相互依赖着。而这样的不对称互赖关系经由新资讯与传播技术 ,全球、即时地联系起来 ,这就是我们要面对的结构性转化所透露的新世纪 ,资讯时代、全球经济、与网络社会。文章针对作为全球城市 (globalcity)的台北市 ,在面临全球经济中的再结构与都市再结构的巨大变局时 ,就它的都市政策研拟首先要面对的现实课题 ,提出分析 ,换句话说 ,这也是一个正在横渡全球化恶水中地方政府 ,摸索它的新角色转化时必须先面对的地方真实情境。     

POPULATION AND THE ECONOMY DURING THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

The changes in population structure currently taking place in both developed and less‐developed nations are part of a very long‐term trend of demographic change that has yet to run its full course. The starting point of this trend is the complete rearrangement of demographic regimes characterised by significant declines in mortality coupled with widespread fertility control. This process started in a small group of European and non‐European societies during the nineteenth century and by the second half of the twentieth century had spread to much of the world. It has brought with it significant economic and social implications for societies affected which have differed by the timing of the transition but not in their basic thrust. Eventually the demographic transition promises to bring with it very rapid and widespread ageing and, within a few decades, world population decline. Some of the long‐term economic implications of this entire process are discussed in this article.     

City Children and Genderfied Neighbourhoods: The New Generation as Urban Regeneration Strategy

Former industrial cities in the West are employing gentrification as urban policy. In these policies, women and families currently play an important role as gentrification pioneers. In my analysis of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, I propose the term genderfication to understand the gender dimensions of this process. Genderfication refers to the production of space for different gender relations. I analyse Rotterdam's urban planning program for becoming a ‘child‐friendly city’, which entails replacing existing urban dwellings with new, larger and more expensive ‘family‐friendly homes’ as a strategy for urban re‐generation. Urban re‐generation supplements regeneration in the form of material and economic restructuring, and refers to the replacement of part of the current population by a new and better suited generation. The ‘child‐friendly city program’ is considered in tandem with punitive ‘youth policies’.     

Recombinant Urbanization: Agrarian–urban Landed Property and Uneven Development in India

This article develops the concept of recombinant urbanization to show how agrarian landed property and land‐based caste/class relations shape the production of post‐liberalization urban real estate markets in India. I focus on two interrelated but differentiated agrarian property regimes in western Maharashtra to argue that real estate development is building on prior uneven agrarian land markets, which were themselves sociotechnically produced by colonial and postcolonial development politics. Through an examination of the organizational form of sugar cooperatives, which mediated agrarian capitalism in an earlier era, I track how these primary agricultural cooperatives are now being reorganized into real estate companies, sometimes with former sugarcane growers as company shareholders. The same caste‐based political and social capital that made sugar cooperatives possible in a capitalist agrarian society is now being leveraged by agrarian elites to ease their own and their constituents’ entry into an urbanizing economy. The concept of recombinant urbanization opens new methodological entryways to analyze the entangled agrarian and urban question in predominantly agrarian and late liberalizing societies.     

Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism

The concept of planetary urbanization has emerged in recent years amongst neo‐Lefebvrian urban scholars who see urbanization as a process taking place at all spatial scales. This article analyses recent critiques of the urban political ecology (UPE) literature which argue that much of the work in the field has been guilty of focusing exclusively on the traditional bounded city unit rather than urbanization as a process. In response, the article reviews various strands of the UPE literature which have (always) moved beyond ‘the city’ to consider the various metabolisms and circulations of humans and non‐humans connecting cities with places outside of their borders at a variety of scales. Furthermore, it suggests how these approaches can productively work with the insights of the planetary urbanization literature, in considering both the changing nature of urbanization and also the socio‐ecological and political implications of these changes. Finally, the article suggests how the methodological approach of the ‘site multiple’ and its focus on everyday practices and lived experiences can be useful for researching diverse urban phenomena and their more‐than‐urban connections.     

What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?

The relationship between urbanization and democratization remains under‐theorized and under‐researched. Radical urban theory has undergone a veritable normative turn, registered in debates about the right to the city, spatial justice and the just city, while critical conceptualizations of neoliberalism present ‘democracy’ as the preferred remedy for injustice. However, these lines of thought remain reluctant to venture too far down the path of political philosophy. The relationship between urban politics and the dynamics of democratization remains under‐theorized as a result. It is argued that this relationship can be usefully understood by drawing on lessons from avowedly normative styles of political theorizing, specifically post‐Habermasian strands of critical theory. Taking this tradition seriously helps one to notice that discussions of urbanization, democracy, injustice and rights in geography, urban studies and related fields invoke an implicit but unthematized democratic norm, that of all‐affected interests. In contemporary critical theory, this norm is conceptualized as a worldly register of political demands. It is argued that the conceptual disaggregation of component values of democracy undertaken through the ‘spatial turn’ in recent critical theory reorients the analysis of the democratic potentials of urban politics around the investigation of the multiple forms of agency which urbanized processes perform in generating, recognizing and acting upon issues of shared concern.     

Sovereignty Beyond the State: Exception and Informality in a Western European City

Bridging debates on urban sovereignty and urban informality, this paper argues that relationships between sovereignty and informality may not reside exclusively in the way the sovereign state decides to allow or forbid informality, but also in the way sovereignty is distributed among a range of state and non‐state actors. Drawing upon fieldwork on the early‐2010s management of displaced Romanian Romani families in two emergency camps in the city of Montreuil (France), the paper shows how the NGO responsible for managing one camp acted as sovereign power, allowing a number of informal activities to thrive within its confines. By contrast, inside the other camp, managed by another NGO that resolutely implemented state directives, only formal activities took place. Building on Dean's (2010) concept of ‘disaggregated sovereignty’, the paper mobilizes this disjuncture as a case for critically examining how the ‘state of exception’ takes shape beyond the state's grip. A subtext running throughout is the parallel between the very first camps for civilians in nineteenth‐century colonized territories and these twenty‐first‐century camps for Roma in Europe—both elicited a state of exception partially predicated on camp dwellers’ perceived ethnic/racial homogeneity.     

快速城市化背景下的土地问题述评

改革开放以后,我国迅速进入到了快速城市化阶段,而快速城市化与快速经济增长互为因果,成为我国转型发展的主要动力。土地制度的改革是三十年来我国经济体制改革的重要组成部分,也是我国城市快速扩张及工业高速发展的重要动力。但是,我国城市化进程中的土地问题也非常突出:一方面,土地生产要素的紧缺已成为我国东部沿海发达地区最大的"门槛",耕地保护因此面临巨大压力;另一方面,土地资产的暴涨也引致了房价暴涨等严重的社会不公问题,"以地生财"的土地财政成为社会关注的焦点。因此,土地制度的改革仍然是我国经济体制改革的重点,而建立统一的城乡土地市场、改革"土地财政"、强化城市增长管理、抑制城市蔓延则是土地制度改革的重点。     

浅谈小城镇建设中的城市形象塑造

21世纪是城市的世纪,未来的20年将是中国城市化和城市高速发展的关键时期。然而,中国的国情和可持续发展战略,决定了中国的城市化必须走小城镇建设的发展道路。如何建设有特点的小城镇,作者借鉴当前不少城市的做法,对城市形象的塑造在小城镇中的应用作出几点探讨。     

Bourdieu Comes to Town: Pertinence,Principles, Applications

This article frames the themes of the two‐part Interventions section ‘Bourdieu Comes to Town’. I first establish the pertinence of Bourdieu's sociology for students of the city by revisiting his youthful work on power, space, and the diffusion of urban forms in provincial Béarn and colonial Algeria. In both cases, urbanization is the key vector of transformation, and the city, town, or camp the site anchoring the forces dissolving the social fabric of the French countryside and overturning French imperialism in North Africa. These early studies establish that all social and mental structures have spatial correlates and conditions of possibility; that social distance and power relations are both expressed in and reinforced by spatial distance; and that propinquity to the center of accumulation of capital (economic, military, or cultural) is a key determinant of the force and velocity of social change. Next, I discuss four principles that undergird Bourdieu's investigations and can profitably drive urban inquiry: the Bachelardian moment of epistemological rupture, the Weberian invitation to historicize the agent (habitus), the world (social space) and the categories of the analyst (epistemic reflexivity); the Leibnizian‐Durkheimian imperative to deploy the topological mode of reasoning; and Cassirer's command to heed the constitutive efficacy of symbolic structures. The plasticity and productivity of his concepts suggest that Bourdieu can not only energize urban inquiry but also merge it into a broader analytic of the trialectic of symbolic division, social space, and the built environment. This paves a pathway for reconceptualizing the urban as the domain of accumulation, differentiation and contestation of manifold forms of capital, which makes the city a central ground, product, and prize of historical struggles.