Urban Matthew Gandy [Ed.

Constellations
 Introduction 4 Assembling modernities: concrete imaginations in Buenos Aires  103
Matthew Gandy Leandro Minuchin
Lagos: city of concrete  108
Giles Omezi
1  Urban lexicons Vertical urbanisms: flyovers and skywalks in Mumbai  113
Planetary urbanisation  10 Andrew Harris
Neil Brenner, Christian Schmid Chennai as “cut-out” city  118
Between Marx and Deleuze: discourses of capitalism’s urban future  14 Pushpa Arabindoo
Jennifer Robinson Queer nostalgia  123
Class, nation and the changing political dynamics of european cities  18 Johan Andersson
Patrick Le Galès London’s Trellick Tower and the pastoral eye  127
“Every revolution has its square”: politicising the post-political city  22 Maren Harnack
Erik Swyngedouw A configuration pregnant with tensions  132
Frontiers of urban political ecology  26 Jane Rendell
Roger Keil “Terror by night”: bedbug infestations in London  139
Otherworldliness 31 Ben Campkin
Benedikte Zitouni Dictators, dogs, and survival in a post-totalitarian city  145
Urban intrusions: a reflection on subnature  35 Ger Duijzings
David Gissen Interstitial landscapes: reflections on a Berlin corner  149
Matthew Gandy
2 Crises and perturbations Phantom limbs: Encountering the hidden spaces of West Berlin  153
Sandra Jasper
The work of architecture in the age of structured finance  42
Louis Moreno
Evictions: the experience of Liebig 14  158
Lucrezia Lennert
Vertical accumulation and accelerated urbanism: the East Asian experience  48
Hyun Bang Shin
A rough and charmless place: other spaces of history in Tel Aviv  163
Noam Leshem
London for sale: towards the radical marketisation of urban space  54
Michael Edwards
A footprint among the ruins  167
Karen E. Till
The politics of the banlieue  58
Mustafa Dikeç
Splintered urbanisms: water, urban infrastructure, and the modern social imaginary  62 5 Projections
Karen Bakker Traces and surfaces  174
Disruptions 65 Stephen Barber
Stephen Graham Faces, structures, words, and colours: collages and décollages of Berlin
System city: urban amplification and inefficient engineering  71 and other cities in the work of Pola Brändle  178
Sarah Bell Joachim Schlör
Zooneses: towards an urban epidemiology  75 Wonderful London: silent-era travelogues and the walking tour  182
Meike Wolf Karolina Kendall-Bush
Chinatown, automobile driving, and the unknowable city  186
3 Excursions Iain Borden
Intimations of past and future in the cinematic city  190
Koebberling & Kaltwasser  82
Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Martin Kohler  85
Urban vistas and the civic imagination  194
Ulrike Mohr  88
Rebecca Ross
Laura Oldfield-Ford  92
“The sun will shine on the homes of the future”: danish welfare architecture
Lara Almarcegui  96
on a scale of 1:1  198
Claire Thomson
4  Places and spaces
Urban complexity: an instance  100 Contributors 203
AbdouMaliq Simone
1 Urban
lexicons
Planetary
11
further socio-spatial differentiations that were occurring inside a rapidly urbanising field.2
Nonetheless, the bulk of twentieth-century urban studies rested on the assumption that

urban Lexicons
Urbani­sation
cities—or, later, “conurbations,” “city-regions,” “urban regions,” “metropolitan regions,”
and “global city-regions”—represented a particular type of territory that was qualitatively
specific, and thus different from the putatively “non-urban” spaces that lay beyond their
Neil Brenner boundaries.
Christian Schmid The demarcations separating urban, suburban, and rural zones were recognised to shift
historically, but the spaces themselves were assumed to remain discreet, distinct, and uni-
versal. While paradigmatic disagreements have raged regarding the precise nature of the
city and the urban, the entire field has long presupposed the existence of a relatively stable,
putatively “non-urban” realm as a “constitutive outside” for its epistemological and empiri-
cal operations. In short, across divergent theoretical and political perspectives—from the
Chicago School’s interventions in the 1920s, and the rise of the neo-Marxist “new urban
sociology” and “radical geography” in the 1970s, to the debates on world cities and global
cities in the 1980s and 1990s—the major traditions of twentieth-century urban studies
embraced shared, largely uninterrogated geographical assumptions that were rooted in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ geohistorical conditions in which this field of
study was first established.
During the last thirty years, however, the form of urbanisation has been radically recon-
figured, a process that has seriously called into question the inherited cartographies that
have long underpinned urban theory and research. Aside from the dramatic spatial and
demographic expansion of major mega-city regions, the last thirty years have also witnessed
During the last several decades, the field of urban studies has been animated by an extraor- several far-reaching worldwide socio-spatial transformations.3 These include:
dinary outpouring of new ideas regarding the role of cities, urbanism, and urbanisation pro- • The creation of new scales of urbanisation. Extensively urbanised interdependencies are
cesses in ongoing global transformations.1 Yet, despite these advances, the field continues to being consolidated within extremely large, rapidly expanding, polynucleated metro-
be grounded upon a mapping of human settlement space that was more plausible in the late politan regions around the world to create sprawling “urban galaxies” that stretch be-
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than it is today. yond any single metropolitan region and often traverse multiple national boundaries.
The early twentieth century was a period in which large-scale industrial city-regions and Such mega-scaled urban constellations have been conceptualised in diverse ways, and
suburbanising zones were being rapidly consolidated around the world in close conjunc- the representation of their contours and boundaries remains a focus of considerable re-
tion with major demographic and socio-economic shifts in the erstwhile “countryside.” search and debate.4 Their most prominent exemplars include, among others, the origi-
Consequently, across diverse national contexts and linguistic traditions, the field of twen- nal Gottmannian megalopolis of “BosWash” (Boston-Washington DC) and the “blue
tieth-century urban studies defined its theoretical categories and research object through a banana” encompassing the major urbanised regions in western Europe, but also emer-
series of explicit or implied geographical contrasts. Even as debates raged regarding how best gent formations such as “San San” (San Francisco-San Diego) in California, the Pearl
to define the specificity of urban life, the latter was universally demarcated in opposition River Delta in south China, the Lagos-centred littoral conurbation in West Africa, as
to a purportedly “non-urban” zone, generally classified as “rural.” As paradigms for theory well as several incipient mega-urban regions in Latin America and South Asia.
and research evolved, labels changed for each term of this supposed urban-rural continuum, • The blurring and rearticulation of urban territories. Urbanisation processes are being re-
and so too did scholars’ understandings of how best to conceptualise its basic elements and gionalised and reterritorialised. Increasingly, former “central functions,” such as shop-
the nature of their articulation. For instance, the Anglo-American concept of the “sub- ping facilities, company headquarters, research institutions, prestigious cultural venues,
urb” and the French concept of la banlieue were introduced and popularised to demarcate as well as spectacular architectural forms, dense settlement patterns, and infrastructural
 arrangements, are being dispersed outwards from historic central city cores, into erst- 13 In short, in an epoch in which the idea of the “non-urban” appears increasingly to be an
while suburbanised spaces, among expansive catchments of small- and medium-sized ideological projection derived from a long dissolved, preindustrial geohistorical formation,

urban Lexicons
towns, and along major transportation corridors such as superhighways and rail lines.5 our image of the “urban” likewise needs to be fundamentally reinvented.
• The disintegration of the “hinterland.” Around the world, the erstwhile “hinterlands” As early as four decades ago, Henri Lefebvre put forward the radical hypothesis of the
of major cities, metropolitan regions and urban-industrial corridors are being recon- complete urbanisation of society, demanding a radical shift in analysis from urban form to
figured as they are functionalised—whether as back office and warehousing locations, the urbanisation process. However, a systematic application of this fundamental thesis has
global sweatshops, agro-industrial land-use systems, recreational zones, energy genera- yet to be undertaken.9 Perhaps, in the early twenty-first century, the moment is now ripe
tion grids, resource extraction areas, fuel depots, waste disposal areas, or corridors of for such an undertaking? Indeed, in our view, the epistemological foundations of urban
connectivity—to facilitate the continued expansion of industrial urbanisation and its studies must today be fundamentally transformed, and Lefebvre’s formulation provides a
associated planetary urban networks.6 highly salient starting point for such an effort. The epistemological shift towards the analy-
• The end of the “wilderness.” In every region of the globe, erstwhile “wilderness” spaces sis of planetary urbanisation requires new strategies of concrete research and comparative
are being transformed and degraded through the cumulative socio-ecological conse- analysis that transcend the assumptions regarding the appropriate object and parameters for
quences of unfettered worldwide urbanisation. In this way, the world’s oceans, alpine “urban” research that have long been entrenched and presupposed within the mainstream
regions, the equatorial rainforests, major deserts, the arctic and polar zones, and even social sciences and planning/design disciplines. In close conjunction with such new research
the earth’s atmosphere itself, are increasingly interconnected with the rhythms of plan- strategies, the investigation of planetary urbanisation will require major theoretical and
etary urbanisation at every geographical scale, from the local to the global.7 conceptual innovations. We need first of all new theoretical categories through which to
In our view, these geohistorical developments pose a fundamental challenge to the entire investigate the relentless production and transformation of socio-spatial organisation across
field of urban studies as we have inherited it from the twentieth century: its basic episte- scales and territories. To this end, a new conceptual lexicon must be created for identifying
mological assumptions, categories of analysis, and object of investigation require a foun- the wide variety of urbanisation processes that are currently reshaping the urban world and,
dational reconceptualisation in order to remain relevant to the massive transformations of relatedly, for deciphering the new emergent landscapes of socio-spatial difference that have
worldwide socio-spatial organisation we are witnessing today. Under contemporary condi- been crystallising in recent decades. Last but not least, we require adventurous, experimen-
tions, therefore, the urban can no longer be understood with reference to a particular “type” tal, and boundary-exploding methodological strategies to facilitate the empirical investiga-
of settlement space, whether defined as a city, a city-region, a metropolis, a metropolitan tion of these processes. Whether or not a distinct field of “urban” studies will persist amidst
region, a megalopolis, an edge city, or otherwise. Consequently, despite its continued per- such theoretical, conceptual, and methodological innovations is a question that remains to
vasiveness in scholarly and political discourse, the category of the “city” has today become be explored in the years and decades ahead.
obsolete as an analytical social science tool. Correspondingly, it is no longer plausible to
characterise the differences between densely agglomerated zones and the less densely set-
tled zones of a region, a national territory, a continent, or the globe through the inherited Endnotes
1 Saskia Sassen, “New frontiers facing urban sociology at the millen- 5 Thomas Sieverts, Cities Without Cities. An Interpretation of the Zwis-
urban/rural (or urban/non-urban) distinction. Today, the urban represents an increasingly nium,” in British Journal of Sociology, 51/1 (2000), 143–159; Ananya chenstadt (London: Routledge, 2003); Joel Garreau, Edge City (New
Roy, “The 21st century metropolis: new geographies of theory,” in Re- York: Anchor, 1992).
worldwide condition in which political-economic relations are enmeshed. gional Studies, 43/6 (2009), 819–830. 6 Roger Diener, Jacques Herzog, Marcel Meili, Pierre de Meuron and
2 Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias (New York: Basic Books, 1989). Christian Schmid, Switzerland: An Urban Portrait (Zurich: Birkhauser,
This situation of planetary urbanisation means, paradoxically, that even spaces that lie well 3 Edward Soja and Miguel Kanai, “The urbanization of the world,” in 2006).
Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic (eds.), The Endless City (London: 7 Roberto Luis Monte-Mor, “What is the urban in the contemporary
beyond the traditional city cores and suburban peripheries—from transoceanic shipping Phaidon, 2005) 54–69; Tony Champion and Graeme Hugo (eds.), world?,” in Cadernos Saúde Pública, Rio de Janeiro, 21/3 (2005), 942–
New Forms of Urbanization (London: Ashgate, 2005); and Allen J. 948; Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House,
lanes, transcontinental highway and railway networks, and worldwide communications in- Scott (ed.), Global City-Regions (London: Oxford, 2001). 2006).
4 Peter Hall and Kathryn Pain (eds.), The Polycentric Metropolis (Lon- 8 Edward Soja, Postmetropolis (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2000); Allen
frastructures to alpine and coastal tourist enclaves, “nature” parks, offshore financial centres, don: Earthscan, 2006); Richard Florida, Tim Gulden and Charlotta J. Scott, Metropolis (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).
agro-industrial catchment zones and erstwhile “natural” spaces such as the world’s oceans, Mellander, “The rise of the mega-region,” in Cambridge Journal of Re- 9 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, translated by Robert Bononno
gions, Economy and Society, 1 (2008), 459–476. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
deserts, jungles, mountain ranges, tundra, and atmosphere—have become integral parts of
the worldwide urban fabric. While the process of agglomeration remains essential to the
production of this new worldwide topography,8 political-economic spaces can no longer be
treated as if they were composed of discrete, distinct, and universal “types” of settlement.