Planetary Cities: Fluid Rock Foundations of Civilization

Nigel Clark

doi:10.1177/02632764211030986

Abstract

Whereas recent framings of planetary urbanization stress the planet-scaled impacts of contemporary urban processes, we might also conceive of cities as being constitutively ‘planetary’ from their very outset. This article looks at two ways in which the earliest urban centres or ‘civilizations’ on the floodplains of the Fertile Crescent harnessed the deep, geological forces of the Earth. The first is the tapping and channelling of sedimentary processes, central to what Wittfogel referred to as hydraulic civilizations (1963). The second is the use of high-heat technologies to smelt and forge metals, which can be construed as a capture of igneous processes. What both sets of practices have in common is that they involve skilled intervention in fluid-solid phase transitions between solid rock and flowing particulate matter. Viewing cities as constitutively geological or planetary in this way can help us reimagine the challenges posed to urban spaces by looming transformations in Earth systems.

Highlights

Whereas recent framings of planetary urbanization stress the planet-scaled impacts of contemporary urban processes, we might conceive of cities as being constitutively ‘planetary’ from their very outset
Too do we catch the traces of what Elizabeth Grosz calls ‘geopower’, the inhuman forces of the Earth and Corresponding author: Nigel Clark
Whereas recent urban theory, developing Henri Lefebvre’s later work, suggests that we must consider ‘the imprint and operationality of urban processes on the planetary landscape’, I want to make the case that we should think of cities as ‘planetary’ from their very outset

Summary

Introduction

Whereas recent framings of planetary urbanization stress the planet-scaled impacts of contemporary urban processes, we might conceive of cities as being constitutively ‘planetary’ from their very outset. They positioned themselves at vital thresholds or junctures in this planetary dynamism: the shifting, unstable ground from which they constituted themselves being the fluid-solid phase transition between hard rock and flowing particulate matter.

Results

Conclusion