Capitalist Urbanization Research Articles

Real estate restructuring: a concept from capitalist urbanization

Resumo Este artigo busca sistematizar a bibliografia que trata da noção reestruturação para referir-se à produção imobiliária no capitalismo contemporâneo, vislumbrando a determinação singular dessa produção no conjunto mais amplo de características da acumulação capitalista desde a crise mundial do início da década de 1970. Para tanto, expõe as teses sobre a especificidade da produção imobiliária e o seu papel nas crises de sobreacumulação do capital. Depois, apresenta estudos urbanos que categorizaram o problema em suas variações terminológicas (reestruturação urbana, socioespacial ou imobiliária). Por fim, conclui sobre o deslocamento dos estudos sobre a reestruturação imobiliária centrada no problema do capital industrial àquelas que passaram a enfatizar a dominância do capital financeiro nas tendências mais recentes da urbanização, inclusive no contexto latino-americano.

Cracking buildings, cracking capitalism: antagonism, affect, and the importance of squatting for housing justice

In this paper I argue that squatting provides a concrete and theoretical location for dismantling binaries between successful and failed resistance. Focusing on the development of a political and affective consciousness and the inherent antagonism within squatting above the temporality of an individual squat or occupation helps to recentre the ‘urban political’ and understand the value and power of the urban commons. I combine radical democracy and affect theory to argue for the centrality of squatting in challenging urban capitalist hegemony. Not only does squatting transform consciousness, but the physically and emotionally supportive practices that it engenders helps to return the emotive as well as the political to the urban environment. I support this claim with reference to the successful 2015 Aylesbury occupation in London, which the occupiers approached with affective solidarity and a desire to reclaim space through antagonistic urban insurrection.

Provincializing Dracula urbanism

In this commentary, I respond to and extend Wilson and Wyly's ‘Dracula urbanism’ by drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and urban political ecology critiques of global urbanism. To do so, I firstly provincialize Dracula urbanism to reframe this notion as a situated form of knowledge. I then examine how vampires specific to Indonesian and Malay cultures might reveal different insights into the nature of capitalist urbanization. I close with a call for urban scholars to engage more closely with critical perspectives from urban studies that continue to occupy the margins of the field. I also invite careful consideration and reflexivity as to the work we achieve by coining new urbanisms.

From the squat to the neighbourhood: Popular infrastructures as reproductive urban commons

We are currently experiencing a manifold crisis of social reproduction which has seriously affected the capacity of popular access to basic goods such as housing, particularly in urban environments. This article seeks to contribute to and expand debates around the urban housing commons by looking at decommodified and collectively managed housing alternatives through the lens of the reproductive commons. Through the case of the Bloc La Bordeta squat and the broader commons ecologies in Barcelona’s Sants district, we explore how complex networks of emancipatory reproductive commons subsist and expand in urban environments, and investigate the role of popular infrastructures in this process. We highlight the reproductive dimension of housing squats in sustaining radical movements in the city. However, popular support is also crucial in defending the housing commons from enclosure and state repression, which creates a mutual interdependence among reproductive commons and urban commons ecologies. In looking at the particular difficulties of reproductive urban commoning, we explore material and subjective challenges of the reproductive urban commons, and we illustrate the importance of looking into and beyond housing and of grounding housing commons’ connections and (dis)continuities within the wider territorial and socio-political context. These challenges create differential forms of commoning in which participation and engagement are unequal but that, nevertheless, are able to support thriving popular infrastructures that become the pillars of the resistance against capitalist urbanisation processes.

The moderating role of Covid-19-related support on urban livelihood capitals: Evidence from suburban Accra

In the Global South, the COVID-19 crisis has compelled varied efforts to quickly address the pandemic's impact on urban livelihoods. Families, friends as well as public, private, and civil society organizations have mobilized various resources to avert the pandemic's onslaught on the survival of the urban vulnerable. Indeed, there is a burgeoning ‘pandemic urban scholarship’ that shed insights on COVID-19 risks, local responses, and impacts on everyday urban life. Yet, it is unclear how many of these responses are affecting urban livelihoods. This paper thus investigates the impact of COVID-19 on urban livelihood capitals (financial, human, social, and physical) and analyses the moderating role of COVID-19-related support (from families, friends, government agencies, faith-based and non-governmental organizations) to address the pandemic's impact on these capitals. Drawing on a quantitative study in Adenta Municipality of the Greater Accra Region, Ghana, the study finds a negative association between COVID-19 impacts and all urban livelihood capitals. Crucially, COVID-19-related support only reduced the negative impact of the pandemic on financial capital, and not on the other forms of capital. The study suggests that building post-pandemic community resilience warrants the need to transition from the usual reactive, fragmented support to integrated, holistic, and contextually embedded long-term strategies that consider the multi-dimensionality of everyday urban life.

Impact of Low-carbon City Construction on Financing, Investment, and Total Factor Productivity of Energy-intensive Enterprises

Faced with the global climate change, as a major greenhouse gas emitter, China launched a pilot policy on low-carbon city construction since 2010. Few studies have discussed how climate policies affect the investment and financing behavior of energy-intensive enterprises. Based on the micro data of A-share listed enterprises in China’s energy-intensive industries, this study aims to assess the productivity effect of low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy and investigates the mechanism of financing and investment using the difference-in-difference method. Empirical results provide evidence that the LCCP policy has significantly improved the total factor productivity of energy-intensive enterprises. In terms of the mechanisms, the LCCP policy has increased the supply of bank credit to enterprises and encouraged their long-term investment in fixed assets and R&D activities. The productivity effect of the LCCP policy is greater for state-owned enterprises and enterprises with political connection. Urban human capital, industrial agglomeration, and resource endowment contribute to the productivity effect of LCCP policy for enterprises in the energy-intensive industries. The findings show that the LCCP is an effective comprehensive policy to promote the high-quality development of energy-intensive industries, and the findings also provide enlightenment for enacting better climate transition policies.

The Reproduction of Urban Capitalism: Street Food and the Working Day in Colonial Mombasa

AbstractThis article argues that street food was an essential part of the social reproduction of Mombasa's working class during the colonial period. Like in other expanding capitalist cities, as Mombasa grew, urban workers lived further from their place of employment, which meant they could not return home for their midday meal. Street-food vendors provided them lunch at low prices in convenient locations, and therefore reproduced the working day by provisioning the calories that bridged morning to afternoon. However, postwar municipal authorities also wanted to create a particular kind of urban society in which the ‘informal’ activities of street-food vendors did not fit, and tried to expel them from the city's streets. As these campaigns unfolded, an unresolved contradiction emerged between this elite view of Mombasa, and the reality that the services vendors provided were necessary for the reproduction of the city's economy.

Politicising land subsidence in Jakarta: How land subsidence is the outcome of uneven sociospatial and socionatural processes of capitalist urbanization

Jakarta is sinking dramatically because of land subsidence, which in turn increases its vulnerability to tidal flooding. The explanation of land subsidence’s causes and the design of solutions is led by geoscientists and engineers, who tend to treat it as largely a technical problem. This paper takes issue with this. It sets out to contribute to politicizing land subsidence by analysing it as part of the sociospatial and socionatural transformations that characterize processes of urbanization. We propose an approach that allows showing how subsidence happens through urbanization’s interconnected moments of horizontal concentration, vertical extension, and differentiation – the weight of the built environment, the expansion of deep groundwater wells, and the remaking of the city (and beyond). By investigating the sociospatial correlation between land subsidence and the development of buildings, and the temporal correlation between land subsidence and the increase of groundwater wells we illustrate how land subsidence is intrinsic to (post-) New Order capitalism (1965–1998 and 1998-now). We also show that it proceeds in uneven ways: those who cause subsidence are not the ones who suffer most from it. Through a serious treatment of soil–water dynamics, our socionatural theorization also helps appreciate how urbanization is always co-shaped by interactions between human and non-human processes.

MOBILIDADE ATIVA: UMA POSSIBILIDADE DE MOBILIDADE URBANA

We live in a period of intense displacement of people and objects, for the most varied reasons, mainly social and/or economic, which can be carried out on foot or by means of motorized vehicles or not. The impression is that everything seems to have more movement. Cities are spaces that serve as a stage for constant transformations and present marks of history, reflecting in a perceptible and visible way the socio-spatial inequality that existed and exists, which represents the process of capitalist urbanization. However, we cannot forget that the population needs to enjoy the qualities of urban life, and, for that, urban mobility is an essential component for the existence of a more democratic city. Therefore, it is necessary to think about urban planning, also observing the problems generated by the displacement of people in the territory. One possible solution is active mobility.

Of fixes and glitches: Mixing metaphors for platform urbanism

The growing influence of digital platforms on cities has captured the attention of urban scholars, marking a ‘platform pivot’ in digital geography and urban research. This article reviews emerging literature on platform urbanism, using the metaphors of the fix and the glitch as starting points from which to discuss two contrasting perspectives on the phenomenon. Rooted in Marxist political economy, fix-thinking highlights how platforms generate new opportunities for value-extraction through processes of disembedding, datafication and deregulation. Influenced by feminist, queer and Black media studies, glitch-thinking performatively underscores the breakdowns and openings in the working of platforms. Where fix-thinking highlights the role of platforms in furthering urban capitalism, glitch-thinking encourages us to envision how things could be otherwise. The review leads to two original insights that may further knowledge on this phenomenon. First, it points to a gap in research investigating instances when breakdown and disruptions turn into organised action and sustained social change. Second, it underscores the citational politics that limit engagements between the two strands, and the potential usefulness of drawing on earlier scholarship that softens or challenge the ‘fix-glitch divide’.

“Ah! To Become the Balzac of America!”: The Balzacian Subtext of Sister Carrie

“Ah! To Become the Balzac of America!”: The Balzacian Subtext of <i>Sister Carrie</i>

INFÂNCIA E JUSTIÇA ESPACIAL: DESIGUALDADES INTER E INTRABAIRROS NO USO DA CIDADE POR CRIANÇAS DA REDE MUNICIPAL DE ENSINO DE CURITIBA

ABSTRACT: This study analyzes if there is inequality in the spatial experiences of children depending on where they live in the city and neighborhoods. It is a quantitative research study in which we analyzed 1060 questionnaires answered by families from 27 local schools in Curitiba, distributed in the nine regional coordination centers at the time. The data were analyzed based on authors from sociology, urban sociology, and geography. We observed that children who lived in the central-northern region of Curitiba and in the central regions of neighborhoods had more access to consolidated leisure and cultural places because they either lived near them or it was easier for them to go to these places (among other issues related to class, gender, race, time at the current neighborhood, family geographical origin). It demonstrates both a “residency effect”, responsible to generate opportunities, and spatial mobility that, as capital, pushed diverse experiences in the city. For children who lived in the poor and on the outskirts of the neighborhood and, further, living in south or extreme south Curitiba (when inter and intra-neighborhood data are crossed), the neighborhood did not present itself as a resource, but as a restriction and spatial mobility seemed to be a scarce urban capital. The configuration was one of a non-social mixture among children who lived in different parts of neighborhoods and the city. The city proved to be spatially unfair and the neighborhood presented itself as a model, teaching superior positions and status to some children and subalternity and sedentariness to others.

Modeling of Changes in Four Urban Capitals Using Up-to-Date Information Systems and Mathematical Graph-Based Simulative Models for Urban Regeneration (Kaunas Case)

There are numbers of various new infill constructions and renovations occurring in many cities annually that are based more on bottom-up initiatives by various stakeholders rather than top-down initiated plans according to a city master plan. Such infill modifications of urban structure might look small, not very numerous and insignificant at the first glance, but even small changes in a complex system such as a city can cause significant shifts in the functioning of the urban network. The presented research, developed on mathematical graph simulative modeling, including space syntax but not restricting the model to it, and employing the theory of four urban capitals by Lars Marcus, offers a way to analyze how the spatial, social, ecological and economic capitals of Kaunas will change if all the currently confirmed and publicly announced construction projects are implemented. The urban spatial network is seen as an integrator and enabler of interactions between the other three capitals. Each of the capitals is represented by quantitative data in the weighted mathematical graph: spatial capital by the perimeters of buildings accessible from a public space; social capital by the number of inhabitants; economic capital by the mean values of land prices; and ecological capital by the size of green areas and their infrastructure. All the data for modeling of changes in the capitals, except the future land prices, was based on information from implemented and planned projects. In order to predict them, a neural network tool was applied. Considering that changes in the absolute values of capitals are in essence limited by local context (e.g., number of inhabitants, market size, natural geographical conditions, and limits of spatial structure for densification), the idea of a positive synergy between urban capitals is proposed and explained in this article. All the presented simulation models are validated using independent open data as density of points of interests, etc. The results of the investigation reveal that synergy between capitals will decrease in Kaunas and that complex top-down coordination of bottom-up initiated urban projects is needed.

Chennai flyways: birds, biodiversity, and ecological decay

The city of Chennai in southern India lies directly under one of the most significant global flyways for migratory birds. Over the last forty years, however, this intricate regional topography of lakes and watercourses that supports millions of birds and other organisms has been drastically reduced. I develop the idea of “ecological decay” in relation to the Pallikaranai wetlands in southern Chennai to explore the multiple socio-ecological dynamics behind declining levels of biodiversity. I note how the colonial simplification of the landscape has been entrained within an accelerated impetus towards regional capitalist urbanization. Thus far, however, the question of biodiversity in Chennai has been largely framed through the analytical lens of European modernity. I consider in particular whether a modified urban political ecology framework might provide distinctive insights into the particularities of biodiversity decline in an Indian context.

Correction to: Monte Alban and Teotihuacan connections: can stable isotope analysis of bone and enamel detect migration between two ancient Mesoamerican urban capitals?

Correction to: Monte Alban and Teotihuacan connections: can stable isotope analysis of bone and enamel detect migration between two ancient Mesoamerican urban capitals?

Capital’s welfare dependency: Market failure, stalled regeneration and state subsidy in Glasgow and Edinburgh

Comparing case studies of long-term, large-scale urban regeneration projects in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, this paper brings together two addendums to the rent gap model in the shape of the ‘reputational gap’ and the ‘state subsidy gap’. These neologisms are mobilised to clarify the risk-laden centrality of the state’s role in both the formation and potential closure of rent gaps in large-scale areas of disinvestment and devalorisation. Whilst such projects often appear as expressions of capital’s state-mediated extractive power over the built environment, we consider them as examples of capitalist failure or fragility – for even with striking levels of public subsidy to address ‘market failure’ the land and property market has not been reinvigorated according to plan. This highlights the need, we argue, for further critical scrutiny of failed or stalled urban regeneration projects as a means of foregrounding the instability, rather than the omnipotence, of contemporary urban capitalism.

Monte Alban and Teotihuacan connections: can stable isotope analysis of bone and enamel detect migration between two ancient Mesoamerican urban capitals?

Monte Alban and Teotihuacan connections: can stable isotope analysis of bone and enamel detect migration between two ancient Mesoamerican urban capitals?

Foutu maximum: The political economy of price controls and national defense in revolutionary France

War necessitates both allocating real resources to defense and certain interest groups being in favor of the government raising resources to wage war. Price controls can be a tool for governments to mobilize additional resources while buying the support of certain key interest groups, hence making war politically viable. France during the revolutionary Terror, the first instance of widespread price controls used in times of war, is used to illustrate this hypothesis. Urban capitalists benefited from price controls on agricultural output combined with forced sales. At the same time, I estimate that in the six months preceding the abolition of price controls, the government saved, by using them (and in real terms), the equivalent of roughly 40% of the annual 1790 central government budget. Consistent with my theory, once the exigencies of the war attenuated and as collective action became more costly for the urban population, price controls were abandoned.

The inversion of majority/minority at the de/reterritorialised urban higher education enclave: Xiamen University Malaysia

This article examines the inversion of majority/minority at Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM), the offshore campus of a mainland Chinese public university and the catalyst development of a satellite township in Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia. Using the framing of the de/reterritorialised urban higher education enclave, it examines how, within the campus gates, the interests, needs and priorities of the ‘migrant majority’ (mainland Chinese users) take precedence over other user groups that have, in turn, become the ‘minorities’. Given the Malaysian state’s longstanding defensive stance towards ‘Chinese’ education, the existence of XMUM is unprecedented. This article shows how this de/reterritorialised international branch campus has been made possible by the broader Sino-Malaysian geopolitical and urban capitalist relations. The inversion of majority/minority on campus challenges and complicates Malaysia’s state-sanctioned multi-ethnic co-existence, which prioritises the Muslim Malay majority over other groups. Nevertheless, students’ views complicate the neat categorisations of majority/minority and inclusion/exclusion. Such perspectives highlight the need to examine the de/reterritorialised branch campus as a space in-the-making.

Ghosts and monsters: Reconstructing nature on the site of the Berlin Wall.

In this paper I seek to develop a larger argument from a small place that no longer exists. Since 2004 I regularly visited a wasteland or Brache, located on the site of the former Berlin Wall, before a process of enclosure and erasure that culminated in the construction of luxury apartments. I draw on my engagement with this temporary space, as a source of reverie and also as a site for ecological fieldwork, in order to reflect on the meaning of urban nature under the speculative dynamics of capitalist urbanisation. I consider the intersections between memory, place, and ecology as part of a wider engagement with 'spectral ecologies' in the urban realm. I suggest that affective interpretations of urban nature should seek to develop a conceptual dialogue between ethnographic insights and structural analysis of urban environmental change.