Socio-spatial Forms Research Articles

Fragmented marginalities: dispossessed peasantry and migrant labour communities in urban North India

ABSTRACT Analogous to the Euro-American context, Indian cities are usually conceptualised as socio-spatial forms where communities at the peripheries of ‘development’ constitute ‘urban margins’. However, such conceptualisations rarely interrogate the varied aspects of marginality within those spaces. Drawing from an ethnography with dispossessed peasantry (in ‘urban villages’) and migrant labour (in slums/jhuggis) in Noida, a north-Indian city, we unpack three aspects of marginality. First, the process of marginalisation; second, two communities negotiating their marginality differently; third, evolving social relations within each. We propose a relational framework: supra-sub levels of structural-spatial and economic-cultural marginalisation to better understand the fragmentations within urban margins.

Ephemeral Domesticity: Campsite

The fleeting nature of life and the resulting transformation of inhabited spaces into artefacts that take on different socio-spatial forms through temporary shelters such as cabins, tents, and trailers is a major theme explored particularly in the 1960s and 1970s that introduced the concept of time into the formation of transient communities. This article focuses on the issue of the endless interior generated by transience in group living linked to tourism and recreational leisure, specifically elective nomadism, which represents alternative models of colonisation and the relationship between habitat and nature. Although the origins of these ideas can be traced back to projects and manifestos of experiments in utopian cities, some aspects of these avant-garde principles can be seen in communities linked to vacation, leisure, and free time today. Lastly, the campsites in Girona serve as an example and case study where these theoretical principles have been spontaneously implemented and are now subject to regulation. They have shaped a model where the city is internalised and transformed into an expanded model of domesticity.

Assembling a Zero-Waste World: From situated to distributed prefiguration

The concept of prefiguration is drawing increasing interest as a lens to study the collective dynamic and transformative potential of alternative organizing. We introduce an analytical distinction between two modes of prefiguration. Situated prefiguration emphasizes affective bonds and direct struggle taking place in bounded organizational spaces, while distributed prefiguration manifests in wider socio-spatial formations. While situated prefiguration has been studied substantially, distributed prefiguration has so far not been adequately theorized. To conceptualize more spatially dispersed forms of prefiguration, we approach prefiguration from a relational perspective, drawing especially on assemblage thinking, which reveals a different way of thinking about how prefigurative practices are spatially organized. We demonstrate different socio-spatial forms of prefiguration in action through an empirical investigation of the zero-waste phenomenon. Our empirical material is built on site visits to zero-waste stores, interviews with zero-wasters and conventional retailers and online sources related to zero-waste. We find that zero-waste stores transcend situated prefiguration by being part of a zero-waste assemblage that aims to radically transform the food and retail system through distributed prefiguration.

Volk utopia: Racial futures and ecological politics on the German far-right

Focusing on the resurgence of so-called völkisch (ethno-nationalist) settlements in northern Germany over the past three decades, this paper explores the emergent socio-spatial forms through which nativist and xenophobic responses to the ecological crisis are being expressed. It argues that political ecologies of the future cannot be understood, in the present conjuncture, without taking into account those actors which are working to manifest the future in explicitly racialised and immunitary forms. After providing an overview of the development of völkisch movements and ideologies since the 19th century, I introduce contemporary actors and organisations which are attempting to reconfigure the climate crisis as a matter of right-wing concern. These strategies position Nature as a signifier that stitches together far-right concerns about the infiltration of the German Volk and landscape by racialised threats, facilitating a form of ecological praxis through rural settlement projects that is heavily centred around a homogenous and naturalised notion of German identity. Rather than an outright denial of the impending urgency of the climate crisis, I argue that völkisch discourses represent a different, and arguably more dangerous response to the spectre of ecological disorder, and one which works in an immunological and anticipatory register. The affective intensity of these imaginaries and strategies also demonstrate that the terrains of hope, possibility, and even utopia increasingly hold the potential to be claimed by the violent and exclusivist ideologies of the far-right. No mere harbinger of ‘things to come’, völkisch strategies represent a mode of responding to the climate crisis in the present, and of prefiguring an ethno-nationalist ‘solution’ which must be taken seriously by activists and scholars.

Liikuvus maal – läbi kriiside hübriidse võrgustunud ruumi poole

Silence and tranquillity form an integral part of rural life and contribute to our understanding of rurality. Thus, it is generally held that time passes slowly in the countryside, far from the nervous city life. Therefore, it is not surprising that mobility and movement (which are associated with speed and being busy) are associated with urbanity and stillness with rurality. Peace and quiet and the absence of hustle are highlighted even by those who live in the countryside and spend long hours in the car commuting between work and home. Such an image affects people’s daily life decisions, movement patterns, local development and infrastructure, as well as national policy of shaping rural life. What is often overlooked is that rural areas are connected to cities in hybrid and extensive ways that affect the development of society as a whole. This article analyses the networks between the country and the city in two recent crises – the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukrainian refugee crisis. It is argued that these relational connections surface vividly in situations of crisis and show that urban-rural networks constitute a kind of hybrid socio-spatial form. Although the boundaries between them are blurred, the image of both rurality and urbanity is powerfully created in discourses and in everyday debates, justifying daily decisions, thus ignoring the intertwined character of these urban-rural relations. Both crises referred to the importance of motility – in both cases, who could move, where and with what timing was of critical importance. In the case of the pandemic, inequalities in mobility manifested themselves in different spheres – which urban dwellers could move to the countryside (owning a country home is a privilege), who could work remotely (mostly in middle-class jobs) or who could go to a place with limited access (mostly islands or popular domestic tourism areas). In the case of Ukrainians, the ability to move was also critical – it consisted in the very possibility of leaving Ukraine. Even after arriving in Estonia, the fate of the refugees largely depended on the location where they found themselves – either in a big city where it was easy to move with the help of public transport or on foot, or in rural areas where it was more difficult to get around due to the lack of public transportation. During the Ukrainian refugee crisis, the rural cosmopolitanism emerged in Estonia more clearly than before. On the one hand, the ethnic and cultural composition of small places changed almost overnight, and thus rural areas became more diverse. On the other hand, this unexpected challenge showed that the rural cosmopolitan community is in many ways vulnerable and precarious. It is noteworthy that strong cultural constructions of rural people (peaceful, safe) and urban people (dangerous invaders) surfaced in conflict situations. On the other hand, the tensions showed how closely the country and the city are connected through mobility. At the same time, mobilities also affected the daily life of people who did not move. One person’s movement could affect another’s staying put, as well as interpersonal relationships, political decisions, and life arrangements. It can be concluded that rural areas are becoming more hybrid for various reasons, and they are connected to the city through various forms of movement in ways that may go unnoticed at first glance, but which emerge precisely in crisis situations. Crises also highlight the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of these bonds, as well as their strengths. Rural populations and their modes of movement shape everyday practices and infrastructures, just as the image and discursive power of rural areas shapes people’s decisions – both big and small.

Planning by Exception: The Regulation of Nairobi’s Margins

Nairobi’s planning regime is characterized by two conditions of exception: on the one hand, exceptions from regulation, that is, planning offices granting exceptions from planning rules and, on the other hand, regulatory regimes that are enforced by low-level administrations outside the planning office but that significantly impact Nairobi’s urban space—we call this exceptional regulation. We argue that it is these two intertwined conditions of exception that make possible the building of shiny modern city as well as the provision of essential urban services. We examine the two conditions of “planning by exception” by analyzing a scrap heap that has endured in central Nairobi for over a decade, even as the neighborhood around it has radically changed. The position of the scrap heap makes the contradictions of this regime of planning particularly visible. On the one hand, the construction sites dotting these neighborhoods provide a wealth of scrap for dealers to gather—and dealers, in turn, provide an essential recovery service. On the other hand, in these increasingly exclusive spaces, businesses like scrap metal heaps are no longer welcome. Thus, the construction boom simultaneously grants scrap dealers opportunities for accumulation and makes the conditions of that accumulation highly uncertain. This scrap metal heap thus offers important insights into Nairobi's spatial regulation because it is both a leftover from the neighborhood’s earlier socio-spatial form and intricately entangled with the redevelopments currently reshaping the city. Our key contribution is that we can only understand urbanization of Nairobi—and other postcolonial cities—if we understand planning as simultaneously working through a regime that grants exceptions to formal planning and by employing exceptional regulation of marginalized spaces.

Welcoming the stranger in Trump’s America: Notes on the everyday processes of constructing and enduring sanctuary

Geographers have begun to explore the concept of ‘immigrant welcome’ as a framework for understanding the tension between spontaneous social support for immigrants and refugees and their subsequent restriction and criminalization by states. Overlooked in the emerging discourse on immigrant welcome is the rich literature in feminist geography that views the everyday practices of endurance, care and social reproduction as essential to, but often hidden within, more traditional, political and economic analyses of power. By focusing on the everyday practices of welcome within sanctuary church activism, I argue for more attention to the energy-intense work that is often excluded from official media and academic accounts, yet which is essential to understanding what makes welcome function or fail. I draw upon one in-depth case study of a sanctuary church in Ohio, where a woman has been living for a year and a half in public defiance of her deportation order. In addition to contextualizing this specific case within the broader policy and immigrant rights landscape, I focus on the spatial, material and relational processes that participants implemented to construct a ‘welcoming’ environment as well as observe the ways in which welcome fails to live up to its imagined potential. The case study provides important grounded insights into the material, relational and emotional processes of enduring sanctuary as a form of resistance to the US deportation regime and enduring sanctuary itself as an intensive socio-spatial form of existence.

Glokalisierung und Feminisierung: Zur strukturellen Krise von Lohnarbeit im europäischen Raum

Abstract. The article discusses the glocalized socio-spatial form of European production as socially crisis-ridden. Combining literature from transnational production network theory, critical political economy, labour process theory and feminist geography the article shows that a European production regime has developed which is based on the transnationalization of economic and competitive parameters on the one hand and multiscalar social fragmentation of labour processes on the other. Its very logic is, hence, functional economic integration based on labour's socio-spatial disintegration. The regime pushes for what we can call the feminization of work because it systematically cuts the former, patriarchal and uneven connection between waged work and socio-political integration. As feminist debates show, progressive perspectives have to be transnational and multiscalar and they have to include fundamental questions about the concept and status of work in society.

Re-thinking society: How can sociological theories help us understand global and cross-border social contexts?

Globalization and cross-border studies have changed the ways in which sociological theorists think about space. Rather than viewing society as integrated, placing individual and collective actors in clearly bounded spaces nested within each other, this article combines several differentiation theories of society as a first step towards achieving an abstract language that can account for a plurality of comprehensive social contexts, thus relating actors to socio-spatial contexts in various ways. Starting with Simmel, the article discusses how some social contexts, such as the state, use the territory to gain exclusivity, whereas other social contexts are non-territorial in nature. Further types combine social and spatial differentiation. The article expands on Simmel’s socio-spatial forms with the help of newer systems theories proposed by Luhmann and Walby and Bourdieu’s field theory. The article provides cross-border and transnational studies with a comprehensive typology of socio-spatial forms. The argument contributes to global studies by considering a plurality of content-differentiated globalization logics and by clarifying the relationship between macro-social contexts and actors. In organizations, networks and professions, content differentiation, spatial segmentation and actors’ contestation intertwine.

Socio-spatial in the Context of the “Ghettozation” Discourse

Ekonomik, kültürel, sosyal ve politik süreçlerin kent mekânındaki izdüşümü olarak mekânsal dışlama ve kentsel eşitsizliklerin ortaya çıktığı görülmektedir. Bu bağlamda kent peyzajında ortaya çıkan kümelenmeler, 1970 sonrası gelişmiş ülkelerde görülen kentsel hareketler ve aktörler arasındaki ilişkilerin kentsel eşitsizlikleri nasıl tetiklediği sorusu önem kazanmaktadır. Kentsel sosyo-mekânsal kapanma ya da inziva biçimleri olarak getto ve banliyölerin yapısal ve işlevsel farklılıklarının altının çizildiği; bu tiplerin aynılaştırılmaya çalışılan söylemlerinin arka planında neler olacağı yönündeki tartışmayı içeren çalışmada bir dizi politik ve medya söylemlerine yer verildi. Sömürge sonrası dünya kentlerinde ileri marjinalliğin mekânları olarak genel kabul gören, şiddet ile yaftalanan, heterojen demografinin emek piyasasından dışlandığı, sistemle sorunlu ilişkisinin tanımlandığı sürgün yerleri kentsel bir oluşum olarak apaçık karşımızda durmaktadır. Gettolaşan Avrupa söylemlerine, Wacquant’ın değerlendirmeleri paralelinde bakan bu yazının temel endişesi; mekânın sosyal boyutu ve topluluk üzerindeki etkilerini anlamaya yöneliktir. Getto, hipergetto, antigetto kavramları arasındaki farkların neler olduğuna ilişkin tartışma La Haine filmi okuması üzerinden yürütüldü. Bu metnin ortaya çıkışındaki süreçte Fransa’da yaşanan “sarı yelek” protestolarının ekonomik, kültürel ve sosyo-mekânsal bagajlarını deşmek düşüncesi yer alır. Mekânsal dışlamanın etno-ırksal, sınıfsal formlarının arkasındaki ilişkiler ağının haritasının çıkartılması; bu çalışmanın hedefini oluşturmaktadır.

Bilenky, Serhiy Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800–1905 (review)

REVIEWS 783 be literally rendered as ‘peril’ of the castle of Sziget rather than the history of its siege, but the contents of the poem justify its translation as ‘siege’. This is indeed the title of the epic’s first English translation by László Kőrössy published by the Catholic University of America Press in 2011. As for the sources of this impressive epic poem, we learn from Zrínyi-album that although in his own foreword the author speaks of his adherence to Homer and Virgil, his principal modelwasOvid‘whosenamedoesnotevengetmentioned’(p.217). Zrínyimust have also found Marino closer to his taste than Tasso, though this ‘marinism’ informs more the Hungarian poet’s lyrical poems, quoted and rather clumsily translated by the translator of the rest of the album (pp. 233–39). Finally, the chapter on ‘Fame and Memory’ (pp. 282–379) could have been shorter. While some parts of it are helpful in the interpretation of Miklós Zrínyi’s survival in national and international memory, the last twenty pages could have been cut — for example, what the Habsburg Archduke Joseph thought about Zrínyi is not of especial importance to the present-day reader. Apart from that, the numerous illustrations and reproductions of images and the majority of the well-prepared essays make this book an important contribution to the growing literature on Hungary’s great seventeenth-century poet and military commander, Count Miklós Serini/Zrínyi. UCL SSEES George Gömöri Bilenky, Serhiy. Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800–1905. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 2018. xxii + 490 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Figure. Tables. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. $95.00: £64.99. Serhiy Bilenky traces the nineteenth-century transformation of Kyiv from a frontier town perched on the Dnipro into the polyglot powerhouse of the Russian Empire’s southwestern borderlands. Ending his analysis before 1905, Bilenky argues that post-1917 shifts in urban life overshadow the comparably dramatic changes that Kyiv and its inhabitants experienced in the nineteenth century. Alongside anthropogenic change, natural disasters drastically altered Kyiv, sometimes levelling it and making the city a laboratory for urban organization. Bilenky’s overarching chronology follows three successive ‘urban regimes’,eachofwhichencompassedchanging waysofproducing,representing, administering and experiencing space in Kyiv. The book itself is structured into four thematic sections that follow the three regimes from different angles. Bilenky’s expansive study of the city’s evolving ‘sociospatial form’ contributes to scholarship on nineteenth-century Kyiv and Eastern European urbanism, enriched most recently by Michael F. Hamm and Faith Hillis. SEER, 96, 4, OCTOBER 2018 784 The first urban regime covers the opening third of the nineteenth century, when Magdeburg rights guarded the municipal autonomy of a loosely integrated Kyiv. After 1835, the mid-century second regime abolished self-rule, bringing intense restructuring and centralization under Nicholas I and his governors. Finally, new structures of self-rule and an ascendant financial elite arose under the post-Reform third regime lasting from 1871 to 1905. By the outset of the third regime, Kyiv would have been unrecognizable to a native son returning after thirty years abroad. Now dominated by military fortifications, boulevards, monuments and a city centre, Kyiv had grown from a sleepy provincial settlement into a city moulded by visionaries of ‘imperial urbanism’ who sought to discipline a topographically messy and demographically mixed environment into an ideal Russian city. Across the three regimes, municipal leaders, imperial administrators, economic elites, urban planners and residents jostled for the means of producing and defining social spaces, revealing a tripartite tension between local initiatives, central imperatives and the rising forces of urban capitalism. Bilenky’s reconstruction of Kyiv’s transformation is informed by his theoretical understanding of space. For Bilenky, space is not a neutral background onto which social interactions are superimposed. Rather, it is a fabric that is constituted by and inseparable from social relations rooted in historically specific modes of symbolic and material production. Different social communities have different ties to these modes of production, and so they produce different kinds of social spaces whose structure and meaning they strive to shape. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre, Bilenky crafts an interdisciplinary account of...

Pushing the limits of urban research: Urbanization, pipelines and counter-colonial politics

This article confronts debates about extended and concentrated urbanization with Indigenous claims to time and space. It does so in part by discussing the degree to which notions of extended and concentrated urbanization allow us to understand the dynamics of pipeline politics in Canada, notably Indigenous claims leveled at infrastructure projects. It argues that Lefebvre-inspired research is both promising and insufficient in this regard. Their promises can only be realized provided one considers urban research as mediation (between everyday life and the social order), contextualize urbanization as a product of non-linear histories through which ‘city’ and ‘non-city’ are transformed or reinstituted as socio-spatial forms, and take seriously imaginaries that may not only contest but also refuse the expansion of the urban field. Meeting these conditions is not possible without resorting to other, non-Lefebvrean approaches that help us understand the settler-colonial aspects of Canadian urban history and grasp the inter-national dimensions of Indigenous politics. Finally, opening up Lefebvre scholarship to considerations of settler colonialism is impossible without the distinct relational theories of time and space that inform radical Indigenous theories (and some pipeline struggles). Indigenous claims in or against urbanization thus represent a limit case of urban research.

Стадії еволюції просторового розвитку міста

The factors influencing the change of urban space were considered. Key stages of urban geohistory were emphasized and in accordance with that the main historical types of cities were grouped. Each evolution stage of the spatial urban development was in detail analyzed. The main features, processes, and superior system of settlement for all historical types of cities were defined. Outstanding characteristics of all historical types of cities of all ages were determined and described. A table for features of historical types of cities on key indicators was designed. A decisive influence of economic systems on urban form and its social geography was defined. The influence of the transition of settlements from the early preindustrial economy to the classical industrial city through a capitalist economy, and later to modern approaches and trends in the so-called theory of “post-industrial” city through research of urban geohistory was traced. The way of decay of urban planning of preindustrial age from the rigidly regulated by the state, however well-ordered and well-thought-out planning on the basis of an orthogonal grid in ancient cities, to the spontaneous and disordered development in the Middle Ages, when the core of the city was the fortress and monastery, was studied. Typicality of the cities of the industrial age of the return from the uncontrolled growth, when the decisive role was played by differentiated rents for land in the early models of the industrial city, to the functional zoning in the age of modernism was defined. Urban planning in the post-industrial age in terms of the traditional city through the global processes of urbanization, which create new socio-spatial forms of settlements (metropolitan region, multicentered metropolitan regions) were described. The impact of globalization on the urban space and on creation of new forms of urban settlements was considered. Social and economic features that indicate the development of postmodern metropolis were considered.

The Spatial Structure of World History

This article examines Karatani’s 2014 book, The Structure of World History , aiming to clarify its sweeping philosophical argument in one respect. Among the many ways that we can appreciate Structure is to read it as the elaboration of a profoundly spatial interpretation of our world’s history. In making this claim I am not suggesting that Karatani simply emphasizes space over time, which is not so. Rather, I contend that many of the book’s achievements are best grasped by reading the book as a work of geography. To be sure, geography, as typically understood by academic geographers, is largely absent from Structure : there are no maps and the word “geography” is only used once. Moreover, Karatani never claims to have found the spatial structure of history. Rather, my claim is that the analysis of world history in Structure is acutely spatially sensitive—particularly with regard to the repetition of sociospatial forms through modes of exchange (which effectively comprise the “structure” of the book’s title)—and that this sensitivity grounds Karatani’s radical reinterpretation of Marxism. Structure thereby provides a spatially informed theory of the historical processes that have made this world as such, one that refuses the telos of capital-nation-state. The result is a revolutionary, geographical philosophy of world history.

Space power(s) gender – socio- spatial control of prostitution and the bourgeois gender order

Using the example of the city of Frankfurt am Main the paper examines the conflict relationship between increasing acceptance and persistent demands for stringent controls that characterizes the perception of prostitution in Germany today. Focusing on prevalent socio-spatial forms of control, that aim at excluding the field from « normal » everyday life, the first part will demonstrate how and why prostitution, though legalized and more and more accepted, remains powerfully stigmatized t...

Erratum

International Journal of Urban and Regional ResearchVolume 38, Issue 5 p. 1934-1934 ErratumFree Access Erratum This article corrects the following: Religion and Rehabilitation: Humanitarian Biopolitics, City Spaces and Acts of Religion YASMEEN ARIF, Volume 32Issue 3International Journal of Urban and Regional Research pages: 671-689 First Published online: September 3, 2008 First published: 01 September 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12199AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Correction made to the online version of the article on 13th August 2014 after first publication in print in September 2008 (volume 32, issue 3). On page 674 (lines 5–8) a segment of text was erroneously elided and has been reinserted. The text now reads: ‘Michel Agiers (2002) calls them city-camps (campes-villes) and hypothesizes them as novel socio-spatial forms that mimic urban parameters of heterogeneities, sociabilities, identity politics and so forth. In contrast, I suggest that these are spaces that often temporally extend in ways that they transform into ‘permanent’ sites within the city.’ This correction has been made to the online version only. Reference Arif, Y. (2008) Religion and rehabilitation: humanitarian biopolitics, city spaces and acts of religion. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32.2, 671– 689. Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Volume38, Issue5September 2014Pages 1934-1934 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Comunidades ribeirinhas como forma socioespacial de expressão urbana na Amazônia: uma tipologia para a região do Baixo Tapajós (Pará-Brasil)

O fenômeno urbano na Amazônia contemporânea se estende pelo território e se estrutura por diversas formas socioespaciais, tais como as comunidades locais, que, ao formarem redes urbanas incipientes, têm características particulares definindo sua importância na estruturação do território regional. Neste artigo, é proposto o uso de técnicas quali-quantitativas para definir uma tipologia para as comunidades ribeirinhas do Baixo Tapajós (Pará): variáveis descritoras, obtidas por questionários de campo aplicados a 62 comunidades, entre Santarém e Itaituba, e submetidas à estatística multivariada. A partir da análise de componentes principais para 30 variáveis e agrupamento hierárquico, cinco grupos de comunidades foram identificados e descritos; resultado considerado consistente com as observações de campo. Variáveis relacionadas principalmente ao uso da terra e à infraestrutura condicionaram esta classificação. Comunidades em unidades de conservação, independente da localização na margem do Rio Tapajós, apresentaram situação distinta das demais, sendo que a presença do Estado, suportando programas governamentais, mostrou-se fundamental para manutenção de todas as comunidades.

Urban Form and Racial Order

This study focuses on the developing urban morphology of Lexington, Kentucky since about 1790, in order to demonstrate how inherited urban geographies help shape racial patterns in the American city. The empirical component begins with a contemporary (potential) racial flashpoint as a catalyst for unpacking the city's urban morphological transformations since the late 18th century. The Lexington case illustrates the importance of particular understandings of urban sociospatial form as key in shaping racialized landscapes in general. It also contributes to a richer understanding of Southern city form and development, and ultimately holds forth the possibilities for intervening in urban sociospatial processes through the cultural landscape to challenge the always-reformulating processes of racial formation.

"A Kingdom of a Thousand Princes but No Kings": The Postsuburban Network in Douglas Coupland's Microserfs

This essay argues that Douglas Coupland's 1995 novel Microserfs is a fiction that represents the postsuburban spaces of the West, and Silicon Valley in particular, as a direct contrast to previous conceptions of suburban space as restrictive and conformist. Critics of Coupland's work have positioned him as a writer happy to champion the older suburban forms of subdivisions and tract homes, but this essay suggests that he is equally as interested in engaging with changing socio-spatial forms and that Silicon Valley, written about by historians as an environment predicated on innovation and prosperity, and as a typical example of an 'Edge City', is scripted by Coupland as a new and empowering phase in the capitalist spatial matrix. Drawing on theoretical work that sees space as being socially produced, Foster shows how Microserf sasserts that the postsuburban spatiality of Silicon Valley is created through an interaction between the characters and the places they live and work in. He argues that the novel deconstructs such pre-existing binaries as city/suburb and home/work and that the new phase of the postindustrial capitalist production of space being entered into in the mid-1990s is directly influenced by the social relations the characters enact. As such, he demonstrates how the novel's narrative dramatizes the maturation of the lead characters through the creation of a communal and mutually beneficial Internet start-up and therefore allows for a revised conception of both the social hierarchies traditionally associated with capitalism and the centrality of the idea of the frontier to the making of a Western imaginary.

Tianjin's Worldly Ambitions: From Hyper-Colonial Space to ‘Business Park’

Between 1860 and 1945, the Chinese port city of Tianjin was the site of up to nine foreign-controlled concessions, functioning side by side. Rogaski defined it as a ‘hyper-colony’, a term which reflects Tianjin's socio-political intricacies and the multiple colonial discourses of power and space. This essay focuses on the transformation of the Tianjin cityscape during the last 150 years, and aims at connecting the hyper-colonial socio-spatial forms with the processes of post-colonial identity construction. Tianjin is currently undergoing a massive renovation program: its transmogrifying cityscape unveils multiple layers of ‘globalizing’ spatialities and temporalities, throwing into relief processes of power and capital accumulation, which operate via the urban regeneration's experiment. This study uses an ‘interconnected history’ approach and traces the interweaving ‘worlding’ nodes of today's Tianjin back to the global connections established in the city during the hyper-colonial period. What emerges is Tianjin's simultaneous tendency towards ‘world-class-ness’ and ‘China-class-ness’.