The Dictionary of Human Geography (213 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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urban system
A set of interlinked cities and towns set within a specific territory (e.g. the nation or the globe). The concept owes its origins to centraL pLace theory and systems analysis approaches to economic functions, and functional divisions of Labour, within national territories (Berry, 1964). While the evolution and contemporary characteristics of national urban systems remains a focus of research, a great deal of urban systems oriented scholarship now focuses on the global scale. Contemporary gLobaL cities or worLd cities research seeks to understand how a network of cities, stretched unevenly across (NEW PARAGRAPH) the world, organizes the spaces of the global economy (Taylor, 2004). em (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Taylor (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urban village
A concept developed by Gans (1962) in his ethnography of an Italian immigrant neighbourhood in central Boston. He identified elements of a coherent local, or ?village like?, social world including ethnicity, kinship, friendship and values that reflected and bolstered residents? identity and helped maintain it over time. Spatially, this social world is located in a clearly defined urban neighbourhood where much of the population has long standing ties an urban village. This argument was set against the understanding, within urban ecology, of urbanism as leading to individuals? with drawal from intimate social interactions. em (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gans (1962). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urbanism
Three common definitions for this highly contested term can be dis tinguished: (NEW PARAGRAPH) The typical way of life of people who live in a city or town. In this first sense, the con cept is usually traced back to Louis Wirth (1938), a chicago schooL sociologist who witnessed and described urbaniza tion in Chicago in the early twentieth century as a process of change to the moral order and the decline of commu nity. The division of Labour and sociocultural and socio economic diver sification lead to both fragmentation of individuals? lives in cities and to the nor mal expectation of living in the proximity of ?unknown others?. Using the criteria of size, density and heterogeneity, Wirth claimed the specificity of ?urbanism as a way of life?. Often, this quality of urban ism is confused with the notion of urban ity, which ascribes characteristics such as sophistication, refinement and courtesy to individuals or communities. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The study of life in cities and towns. In this second sense, urbanism combines a sci entific method of urban enquiry and an often linked practice of socio spatial en gineering (planning) typical of complex modern societies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Urbanism now often refers to the way people live more generally. Magnusson (2005) is only one of a succession of commenta tors who, since Lefebvre (1970 [2003]) foresaw a modern ?urban revolution?, has claimed that it is ?only recently that pre ponderantly modern urban societies have emerged?. The traditional split of town and countryside has been eliminated. As society becomes more urbanized, the city disappears as the distinct object of enquiry and practice, and urban society overall becomes the object of scientific enquiry and policy action. Critics have argued that this is both an ethnocentric and a teLeoLogicaL use of the term, since it equates urbanism with (and by implication normalizes) a modeL specific to the global north. Thus Robinson (2004, p. 710) insists: ?This phantasma goria of urban experiences in the west, this western ??modern,?? often fails to capture the inventiveness and creativity of people in poor cities, more often tied to the heroic (tragic?) resilience of urban dwellers in the face of extraordinary dif ficulties, rather than to the creative po tential of city life.? (NEW PARAGRAPH) French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (2003 [1970]), arguably the most influential urban theorist of the past fifty years, was critical of the ideological and state centric qualities of urbanism as a state led project of modern ization: ?Urbanism . . . masks a situation. It conceals operations. It blocks a view of the horizon, a path to urban knowledge and prac tice. It accompanies the decline of the spon taneous city and the historical urban core. It implies the intervention of power more than that of understanding. Its only coherence, its only logic, is that of the state the void. The state can only separate, disperse, hollow out vast voids, the squares and avenues built in its own image an image of force and restraint? (ibid., pp. 160 1). This state centred urban ism militates against the possibilities of the urban and against the promise of the right to the city in urban society. In Lefebvre?s own notion of an urban society, which now encom passes the globe, urbanism in this sense will ultimately need to be critiqued and overcome to make way for liberated urban everyday Life. (NEW PARAGRAPH) If urbanism is our way of life more generally, it can also be used as a prism through which human societies and their futures can be understood. The postmodern urbanism of Los Angeles was discussed in this manner during the 1980s and 1990s (see Los angeLes schooL). In the same sense, commentators (NEW PARAGRAPH) have looked at other cities more recently as windows into a common future: ?Dubai is an extreme example of urbanism. One of the fastest growing cities in the world today, it represents the epitome of sprawling, post industrial and car oriented urban culture. Within it, large numbers of transient popula tions are constantly in flux? (Katodrytis, 2005). The term ?urbanism? has of late also been used in compound phrases to describe either real developments in the constitution of cities or normative prescriptions on how to build (better, more sustainable, more live able) cities. Among the former is the term ?transnational urbanism?, popularized by Michael Peter Smith (2001a), who believes in the establishment of cities as places through multifarious social relationships in spaces across national borders (see transna tionaLism). Among the latter, the term ?urbanism? has now been resuscitated by the followers of the architectural style and prac tice of New Urbanism which, with its higher than usual densities and architectural features such as front porches and back alleys, is ostensibly meant to be a realistic answer to urban sprawL in North America. Observers have called this a ?new suburbanism?, which invokes notions of density and residential community believed absent from common suburban forms of urbanism. (Lehrer and Milgrom, 1996). Similarly, Timothy Luke has appealed for ?contemporary urbanism as public ecology?, which puts ecological issues into the centre of the urbanist project today (Luke, 2003). rk (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urbanization
John Friedmann (2002) dif ferentiates three meanings of urbanization. The most common use of the term is demo graphic (see demography) and it refers to ?the increasing concentration of people (relative to a base population) in urban style settlements at densities that are higher than in the areas surrounding them? (p. 3). The experience and expectation of human demographic change is ultimately the complete statistical urbaniza tion of the world. Demographic urbanization is tied to an increase in the complexity of social life (Lefebvre, 2003 [1970]: see also urban ism). Distinct patterns and configurations of human settlement structure growth of cities: suburbanization, exurbanization, new urban ism, metropolitanization and the emergence of city regions. Density is not always part of urbanization, as urban regions sprawL across wide expanses in emerging forms of settle ments as diverse as suburbs, excluded gated communities in natural settings and squatter settlements (see squatting). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A second notion of urbanization is economic. Friedmann makes reference here to ?economic activities that we normally associate with cities? (2002, p. 4). While this traditionally would exclude ?rural? activities such as agriculture, forestry, fishing or mining, Friedmann reminds us that many of these activities are directly related to urban forms of capitalization and organization. This obser vation is shared by Lefebvre, who notes: ?The urban fabric grows, extends its borders, cor rodes the residue of agrarian life. This expres sion, ??urban fabric,?? does not narrowly define the built world of cities but all manifestations of the dominance of the city over the country. In this sense, a vacation home, a highway, a supermarket in the countryside are all part of the urban fabric? (Lefebvre, 2003, pp. 3 4). Economic urbanization leads tendentially to the disappearance of ?residual? rural activities and ultimately to ?the erasure of the traditional category of rural? (Friedmann, 2002, p. 4: cf. ruraL geography). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The third meaning of urbanization is socio cultural and ?refers to participation in urban ways of life?. This implies the embrace by populations of urbanism as a way of life. While it is possible to identify certain develop ments, such as literacy, universally with socio cultural urbanization, Friedmann cautions against equating civiLization with urbaniza tion in the tradition of the chicago schooL (see also Robinson, 2004). Friedmann is also quick to point out that ?sociocultural urban ization is a dimension that, like the economic, is no longer exclusively associated with the city as a built environment? (p. 5). While cybercafes clearly are nodes in virtual deterri torialized networks, erstwhile urban practices such as certain modes of communication are now found in the most remote parts of the world. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Friedmann employs the term ?the skein of the urban? to describe ?a new global topog raphy of the urban, which ?steadily advances across the surface of the earth?. Its ?vertical dimensions are layered [such that] demo graphic, economic, and sociocultural urbani zations do not necessarily coincide in space? (2002, p. 6). The nineteenth and twentieth century narrative of urbanization as modern ization has been called into question since the 1980s, when gLobaL city researchers detected new societal cleavages even in Western cities such as Los Angeles and New York City. Mike Davis? influential text City of quartz (1990) presented a dystopian view of the globalizing Pacific Rim boomtown Los Angeles. In the global south, urbanization now commonly comes with underdevelopment. The emer gence of huge agglomerations for instance, in some African contexts has led to two counterposed narratives of urbanization: ?The first is an eschatological evocation of urban apocalypse: poverty, vioLence, disease, polit ical corruption, uncontrollable growth and manic religiosity . . . In this nightmare vision, the city is on the brink of a cataclysm brought about by civil strife and infrastructuraL col lapse? (Gandy, 2005, p. 38). A second view is more upbeat and focuses ?on the novelties of the city?s morphology . . . as the precursor to a new kind of urbanism, hitherto ignored within the teleological discourses of Western modern ity; one which may be perfectly adapted to the challenges of the twenty first century? (ibid., p. 39). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Considerable controversy has now ensued as to the way in which urbanization has to be understood in a global context. Some have visualized global urbanization processes in terms of new hierarchies and networks, detected as a new class of gLobaL cities or worLd cities. Others have resisted this narra tive as Western and potentially imperialist, and have suggested models of global urbanization less tied into notions of supremacy of certain urban centres (Marcuse and van Kempen, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Differences between urbanization in the global North and the global South seem to be getting more pronounced, with rates of urbanization higher in africa, asia and Latin america than in europe and North America. And even inside larger regions and among urban areas that appear similar on the surface, differentiation occurs. Terry McGee, for example, who has identified several distinct ively Asian features of urbanization domin ance of the population giants; immense urban increments; the prominence of megacities; and uneven globalization has also pointed to an internal ?two tier structure of Asian urbanization?. Using Seoul, Korea and Dhaka, Bangladesh, as examples, he presents ?two extremes? of challenges of current urbaniza tion in Asia: one economically successful, and the other not (McGee, 2001). Similarly different models of urbanization can be iden tified comparing seemingly similar types of cities on different continents in the South. Drawing on her research on African cities, Jennifer Robinson (2006) argues against ?propagating certain limited views of cities and thereby undermining the potential to (NEW PARAGRAPH) creatively imagine a range of alternative urban futures' (p. 173). At the end of the twentieth century, expectations rose that cities would lose their significance in a generalized NETwoRk society of flows, which would make agglomeration in place an anachron ism. Little evidence has been forthcoming to support such an expectation, however, even in those parts of the world where absolute urban ization rates declined (Castells, 1996b; Sassen, 2000; Storper and Manville, 2006). It is safe to say that although urbanization and the resurgence of urbanization in the West are of prime significance, the main form in which urbanization now takes place is through squATTlNG by migrant populations in the demographic hot spots of the developing world. Urbanization now leads to a ?planet of slums? (Davis, 2004a). Rk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Amin and Thrift (2002); Brenner and Keil (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urbicide
Literally ?killing cities', urbicide refers to the intentional attempt to erase or destroy a city or cities for political purposes. The term has two main origins. (NEW PARAGRAPH) One lies in the critique of modern urban planning. Building on the work of architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable and her ?Primer on Urbicide' (Huxtable, 1970), Berman (1996) used the term to object to modernist redevel opment strategies in American cities and their violent substitution of soulless abstraction for vibrant traditional streetscapes. Echoing Berman, Merrifield (2004) invoked the same concept in his analysis of the situationists? resistance to comprehensive redevelopment in Paris in the 1970s. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The term was mobilized in a second sense by Balkan scholars and architects to condemn the way in which Serbian armed forces in the war of the 1990s targeted the architectures and spaces of Dubrovnik, Sarajevo and other cities that were most visibly identified with a history of religious, ethnic and national plur alism and heterogeneity in what rapidly became the former Yugoslavia (Coward, 2004: see also ethnic cleansing). Since then, the analysis of urbicide through military vio lence has been extended both historically and geographically. Scholars have explored what W.G. Sebald called the ?natural history of destruction', the campaign of British and American strategic bombing of German cities in the Second World War, in exactly these terms (see Mendieta, 2007), for example, while Graham (2003), Gregory (2004a), Weizman (2007) and others have analysed how Israeli armed forces have deliberately destroyed the collective infrastructure of Palestinian cities as part of their attacks on the Occupied Territories since 2002. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The two streams of work, the economic and the martial, forcefully collide in discus sions of URbANlSM in the global south, where Goonewardena and Kipfer (2006) have iden tified a ?post colonial urbicide' under the sign of a new imperialism (cf. Schwartz, 2007). These later studies strongly suggest that urbi cide is about more than the hollowing out of urban economies, the destruction of memory or the erasure of the physical traces of past communities, important and injurious though these are. Coward (2006; see also 2007) fol lows Martin Heidegger to argue that ?there is more to the constitution of a polis than the gathering of anthropos': in other words, the physical fabric of the city is not incidental to, but constitutive of the possibilities of political community. In destroying this relational space, urbicide targets the possibility of polit ical community and the very provocation of difference of heterogeneity that is at its core. Seen thus, urbicide is a version of polit ical violence that is not ?merely? corporeal and material, but also profoundly existential: ?Urbicide is a politics of exclusion aimed at establishing the fiction of a being without others? (p. 434) (cf. genocide). sg/dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Graham (2004); Campbell, Graham and Monk (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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