On the conditions of ‘late urbanisation’ (original) (raw)
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On the conditions of 'late urbanization'
Urban Studies, 2021
We are living through a global urban transition, but the timing of this transition has varied significantly across countries and regions. This geographic variation in timing matters, both theoretically and substantively. Yet contemporary debates on urbanism hinge primarily on questions of universalism versus particularism, at the expense of attention to how history and geography collide to shape urban processes. Specifically, they neglect the critical fact that urbanisation in many countries today is late within the context of the global urban transition. We argue that trajectories of contemporary urbanisation must be understood in relation to a suite of conditions unique to the late 20th and early 21st centuries and partly shaped by early urbanisation, including historically unprecedented demographic intensity, hyperglobalisation, centripetal state politics and the spectre of environmental catastrophe in the late Anthropocene. These factors condition the range of possibilities for late urbanisers in ways that did not apply to early urbanisers yet can also produce diverse outcomes depending on local circumstances. We draw on a comparison between countries in sub-Saharan Africa and China to illustrate why the conditions of late urbanisation matter, but also why they have produced highly variable outcomes and are not deterministic of urban futures.
Foreboding declarations about contemporary urban trends pervade early twenty-first century academic, political and journalistic discourse. Among the most widely recited is the claim that we now live in an 'urban age' because, for the first time in human history, more than half the world's population today purportedly lives within cities. Across otherwise diverse discursive, ideological and locational contexts, the urban age thesis has become a form of doxic common sense around which questions regarding the contemporary global urban condition are framed. This article argues that, despite its long history and its increasingly widespread influence, the urban age thesis is a flawed basis on which to conceptualize world urbanization patterns: it is empirically untenable (a statistical artifact) and theoretically incoherent (a chaotic conception). This critique is framed against the background of postwar attempts to measure the world's urban population, the main methodological and theoretical conundrums of which remain fundamentally unresolved in early twenty-first century urban age discourse. The article concludes by outlining a series of methodological perspectives for an alternative understanding of the contemporary global urban condition.
Introduction: A global view of urbanization
2018
Urbanization and the urban way of life are now universal phenomena across the globe. Symbolically, and for the first time in history, over 50 percent of the world’s population is now classified as urban. Even larger proportions of the world’s economic activities and social transformations take place in cities, especially larger cities. Although too often described as an “event” or as a challenging turn, this crossing of a threshold does not represent a sudden change in the evolution of the complex urban systems. There is a surprising continuity in the recent history of urbanization in each region of the world that can be modeled and predicted. What is new and may represent a true bifurcation in this history is indeed to be observed in the spatial distribution of urban growth that has shifted from around the Atlantic towards the Pacific regions and African continent and from the richest towards the poorest countries of the world.
On the Nexus of the Spatial Dynamics of Global Urbanization and the Age of the City
A number of concepts exist regarding how urbanization can be described as a process. Understanding this process that affects billions of people and its future development in a spatial manner is imperative to address related issues such as human quality of life. In the focus of spatially explicit studies on urbanization is typically a city, a particular urban region, an agglomeration. However, gaps remain in spatially explicit global models. This paper addresses that issue by examining the spatial dynamics of urban areas over time, for a full coverage of the world. The presented model identifies past, present and potential future hot-spots of urbanization as a function of an urban area's spatial variation and age, whose relation could be depicted both as a proxy and as a path of urban development.
Urban Geography I: Locating Urban Theory in the "Urban Age"
In the midst of what has been termed the "urban age," two divergent approaches to understanding life in cities have emerged. In this first of three urban geography Progress Reports, I engage these two strands of urban theory, identifying key differences in their intellectual, political and geographical genealogies, and consider their political and epistemological implications. Borrowing from Chakrabarty's concept of History 1 and History 2, I name these approaches "Urbanization 1" and "Urbanization 2." Urbanization 1 is exemplified by the planetary urbanization thesis that posits the complete urbanization of society, whereas Urbanization 2 is characterized by a more diverse set of interventions, united by a political and epistemological strategy of refusing Eurocentrism and "provincializing" urban theory.
The end of urbanisation? Transformation of the urban concept
Dela, 2004
Cities and their environments are continuously changing. During the last two hundred years urbanization has replaced a predominantly rural landscape with an urban landscape. Although the urbanization apparently has transformed the western countries most, the pace of urbanization is now highest in economic less developed countries. However, this does not mean an end to urbanization or a stabilization of the urban landscape in more developed countries. In the second half of the 20 th century growth of large cities ceased and medium sized and small cities went into a period of rapid growth. This new pattern of urbanization (counter urbanization) was strongly debated during the 1970s and onwards, in particular in relation to its practical implications. Decentralisation of political decision making and public service production was soon following the population and often used as an instrument to stimulate growth in less prosperous regions. The Scandinavian countries are cases in point. During the last decade still more examples points at a reversal of the trend; metropolitan areas have begun to grew again both due to net migration and natural increase of the population.
De-urbanization: From the Shock to the Revolution of a New Urban Logic
Handbook Urbicide The Death of the City , 2023
Cities and urban territories in their accelerated urbanization processes go through logics adjusted to contemporary demographic, spatial, economic, social and political trends that cannot be avoided. In this way, certain disasters are presented as opportunities to transform urban planning from the power and interest of certain sectors (urban shock) or from the social sense of urbanism (urban revolution). This chapter analyzes three global disasters that become urban shocks and raise the question of whether they produce massive urbanization or incomprehensible de-urbanization. For this, it is analyzed under five dimensions or parameters: demo-graphic or migration trends, urban gaps, settlement logics, residence-work relation and outsourcing of urban fixed capital. To conclude that, the incoherent assimilation of de-urbanization processes leads to voracious urbanization and therefore to the production of ghost cities, smart cities and abandoned and degraded territories.
Urban revolutions in the age of global urbanism
This special issue, papers presented at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded conference in Jakarta (March 2011), examines the current 'urban century' in terms of three revolutions. Revolutions from above index the logics and norms of mainstream global urbanism, particularly the form they have taken as policymakers work with municipal officials worldwide to organise urban development around neoliberal norms. Revolutions from below refer to the multifaceted contestations of global urbanism that take place in and around cities, ranging from urban street demonstrations and occupations (such as those riveting the world in early 2011 when these papers were written) to the quotidian actions of those pursuing politics and livelihoods that subvert the norms of mainstream global urbanism. It also highlights conceptual revolutions, referencing the ongoing challenge of reconceptualising urban theory from the South -not simply as a hemispheric location or geopolitical category but an epistemological stance, staged from many different locations but Downloaded from always fraught with the differentials of power and the weight of historical geographies. Drawing on the insights of scholars writing from, and not just about, such locations, a further iteration in this 'southern' turn of urban theorising is proposed. This spatio-temporal conjunctural approach emphasises how the specificity of cities -their existence as entities that are at once singular and universal -emerges from spatio-temporal dynamics, connectivities and horizontal and vertical relations. Practically, such scholarship entails taking the field seriously through collaborative work that is multi-sited, engages people along the spectrum of academics and activists, and is presented before and scrutinised by multiple publics.