Capitalist Urbanization Research Articles

Henri Lefebvre and planetary urbanization: Progress and prospect

<p>Henri Lefebvre, a key Marxist urban theorist, introduced the concept of ‘Planetary Urbanization,’ a cutting-edge theory addressing emerging global forms of capitalist urbanization, where traditional urban theories have limited explanatory power. This paper reviews studies on planetary urbanization over the past 20 years in relation to Lefebvre’s urban theories. The report categorizes planetary urbanization’s contributions to urban theory into two primary aspects. First, it innovatively incorporates the processes of urbanization and the extended operational landscapes within urban research. Second, it proposes new trajectories for urban politics by reshaping Lefebvre’s concept of ‘the right to the city.’ However, by tracing Lefebvre’s theories, the report argues that planetary urbanization overlooks his emphasis on ‘everyday life’ while aligning with his views on generality and universality. Consequently, this dehumanized approach fails to uncover the significant political potential embedded in urban daily life. Additionally, by neglecting the differences among urban populations, the theory adopts a naive perspective on the subaltern’s capacity to articulate their ‘right to the city.’ Moreover, as a Eurocentric theory rooted in Western urbanization history, it inadequately explains context-specific events occurring in the urbanization of the Global South. Thus, this paper suggests that future research on planetary urbanization should incorporate considerations of urban everyday life, recognize social differences, and account for context-specific dependencies.<strong></strong></p>

Transhumance Urbanism as an Urban Otherwise: Inhabiting Agrarian Incompletion at the Intersections of Extended Urbanisation‐Extended Ruralisation

AbstractAmid the ongoing transformation of agrarian territories in peripheral geographies across the world through extended urbanisation, this paper delves into the persistence of peasant and pastoral strategies amidst the closing down effects of land enclosure and fragmentation. Based on ethnographic research conducted with transhumant pastoralists in Delhi National Capital Region, this paper finds that instead of diminishing under agrarian‐urban transformation, pastoralists reassign use value to the fallows, wastelands, and surpluses of real estate speculation, thereby crafting a transhumance urbanism beyond the sedentary ontology of land and property. Understood as an urban otherwise, this urbanism remakes the fragments of material incompletion inherent within the agrarian‐urban transformation, offering socio‐ecological alternatives beyond the current impasse. The paper discusses the tentative, unsettled, and transient nature of this urbanism, which is always inter‐mixed with its non‐urban other. Contributing further to the scholarship emerging at the interstices of urban and agrarian studies, this paper calls for further comparative research on the territorial adaptation of peasant and pastoral populations routinely excluded from capitalist urbanisation processes unfolding in peripheral regions where sizeable itinerant populations coexist with extreme pressures of land enclosure.

The digital economy and entrepreneurial dynamics: An empirical analysis of urban regions in China

The economic landscape in China has evolved to what is termed a “new normal”, marked by a strategic focus on the digital economy as a lever for regional entrepreneurship. This change is considered essential for fostering shared wealth and elevating the standard of economic progress, aimed at tackling inequality and advancing inclusive finance. This article undertakes an empirical analysis of the relationship between the digital economy and entrepreneurial activities, utilising panel data from 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2021. The findings highlight the significant influence of the digital economy in stimulating entrepreneurial activity. In particular, the digital economy is found to boost urban entrepreneurial endeavours by improving the quality of urban human capital. Further investigation reveals a varied impact of the digital economy on urban entrepreneurial activity, with the eastern region exhibiting a more marked effect in facilitating urban entrepreneurship.

Set in stone: modern monuments and strategic heritage in Xaltocan, Mexico

ABSTRACT For the past century, Mexico has tightly managed its heritage resources to emphasise the achievements of Prehispanic civilisations which contribute to national patrimony. Public interest in these great civilisations has fuelled an impressive national archaeological programme that has resulted in cutting-edge research and sometimes helped elevate the status and visibility of living indigenous communities. However, nationalist narratives of the past tend to be somewhat monolithic, and in the case of Mexico, they have emphasised hierarchical, exploitative states with powerful, urban capitals. The social value of Aztec identity and icons has become so potent that even in places with unique archaeological signatures and their own exceptional histories, local heritages are often intertwined with the Aztec narratives. This paper analyses two modern monuments in the small central Mexican town of Xaltocan, reflecting on long-term and recent developments in the region that have influenced the perceived social and political values of narratives of the past and the identities connected to them. Based on these analyses and drawing on interview responses from current residents, I argue that the monuments are important testaments to the complex ways that locals conceptualise and strategically articulate their heritage.

Capitalist urbanization in the post-neoliberal and de-globalizing world economy: A minor critical engagement with VIP-Urbanism literature

The special issue “Contesting VIP Urbanism” includes timely analytical interventions to contest an increasing tendency to luxury investments in many capitalist cities of the past decades. This essay raises some theoretical and empirical questions concerning the present state of globalization and neoliberalism as two defining characteristics of an era of the global capitalist economy in which both the tendency toward VIP-Urbanism and the approaches criticizing it arise. It aims to extend the discussion on contesting the tendency toward VIP-Urbanism by drawing attention to questions regarding the role of macroeconomic structural forces that enable or hinder urban governance. In response to the changing historical context, the essay proposes developing a multi-scalar and inter-sectoral framework, which also includes reintroducing the national level into urban geographic inquiry to contextualize micro dynamics of investments over individual land plots by individual investors.

Innovation and entrepreneurship of Chinese returning migrant workers in their home region

This study aims to investigate the influence of pre-entrepreneurial career mobility frequency and job changes among returning migrant workers (RMWs) on the innovation level of enterprises, with a particular focus on the mediating role of urban social capital accumulated by RMWs. Using data from the “current entrepreneurial status of RMWs”, we applied an ordered probit model to validate our hypotheses. To address endogeneity, a recursive bivariate probit model was used, and stepwise regression combined with bootstrap methods was employed to ascertain the mediating influence of urban social capital. Our results demonstrate a significant positive correlation (P < 0.01) between pre-entrepreneurial career mobility frequency and the innovation level of enterprises among RMWs. However, there's a notable negative correlation (P < 0.01) between experiences as elementary workers and enterprise innovation level, while technical and marketing roles correlate positively (P < 0.01) with enterprise innovation level. Urban social capital mediates the relationship between career mobility and enterprise innovation level, suggesting that career mobility enhance urban social capital accumulation, influencing RMWs' enterprise innovation levels. This empirical evidence holds even after robustness tests. We further observed that RMWs with fewer than three career moves lean towards low level of enterprise innovation, while those with three or more gravitate towards high level of enterprise innovation. This study advances the theory of career mobility and enriches the understanding of enterprise innovation levels. Additionally, it provides critical theoretical insights for prospective RMWs entrepreneurs in strategizing their career mobility and job changes. Policy implications suggest that, in addition to providing entrepreneurial support, the government should facilitate pre-entrepreneurial career mobility channels for migrant workers and consider the transition from rural to urban employment as a socialized ritual for RMWs engaging in entrepreneurship.

Allostatic load and frailty do not covary significantly among older residents of Greater Poland

BackgroundPhysiological dysregulation/allostatic load and the geriatric syndrome frailty increase with age. As a neurophysiological response system, allostasis supports survival by limiting stressor-related damage. Frailty reflects decreased strength, endurance, and physical abilities secondary to losses of muscle and bone with age. One suggestion, based on large cohort studies of person’s ages 70 + years, is that frailty contributes to allostatic load at older ages. However, small community-based research has not confirmed this specific association.MethodsTo further explore possible associations between allostatic load and frailty, we enrolled 211 residents of Greater Poland aged 55–91 years living in a small village (Nekla, N = 104) and an urban center and capital of Greater Poland (Poznan, N = 107). For each, we recorded age, self-reported sex, and residence and estimated a 10-biomarker allostatic load score (ALS) and an 8-biomarker frailty index. We anticipated the following: higher ALS and frailty among men and rural residents; for frailty but not ALS to be higher at older ages; significant associations of ALS with sex and place of residence, but not with age or frailty. The significance of observed associations was evaluated by t-tests and multivariate regression.ResultsALS did not vary significantly between men and women nor between Nekla and Poznan residents overall. However, women showed significantly higher frailty than men. Nekla men showed significantly higher ALS but not frailty, while Nekla women showed nonsignificantly higher ALS and lower frailty than Poznan. In multivariate analyses, neither age, nor sex, nor residence was associated with ALS. Conversely, age, sex, and residence, but not ALS, are associated significantly with frailty. In Nekla, both age and sex, but in Poznan only age, are associated with ALS. Among women, both age and residence, but among men, neither associated with ALS. In no case did ALS associate significantly with frailty.ConclusionIn this sample, lifestyle factors associated with residence, age, and sex influence stress-related physiology, less so in women, while ALS and frailty do not covary, suggesting their underlying promoters are distinct. Similar complex associations of physiological dysregulation with frailty, age, sex, and residence likely exist within many local settings. Knowledge of this variation likely will aid in supporting health and healthcare services among seniors.

Territorial heritage gentrification in Abdali in Amman, Jordan

Having established itself as a heritage discourse, planetary gentrification is being studied in terms of how it operates in the Global South. This study focuses on the case of Abdali Amman, a significant mixed-use neighbourhood in Jordan that has experienced numerous mega-gentrification initiatives. According to Bourdieu’s theories of the state and dispositional practices, this study critically evaluates urban gentrification practices. In terms of gentrification governance, which takes place in two adjacent ‘state’ and ‘civic’ zones inside the Abdali district, this study analyses the interactions between transnational and state actors and the intragovernmental (state-municipality) governance system. Gentrification in Amman is connected to the revitalisation of historic sites, is a matter of urban governance, and operates from the transnational sphere along national and local lines. Furthermore, gentrification is caught in a desire/resistance paradox with calls for legitimacy and recognition. As a country in the Global South, Jordan has welcomed capitalist urbanisation. Gentrification is articulated within a flux between deterritorialisation/reterritorialisation, producing a form of ‘heritage gentrification’ in which history and national heritage are sacrificed through a process of satellite gentrification that is rooted in generative cultural transformation and governed by decentralised power structures. Introducing a Western blueprint of planetary gentrification through narrow gates into non-Western environments is a prevailing challenge.

Seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in 10 Regional Capitals of Cameroon, October-December 2020.

Cameroon was among the most affected African countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the true prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 remains unknown. From October to December 2020, we conducted a cross-sectional, age-stratified SARS-CoV-2 seroepidemiological survey at 30 purposively selected community-based sites across Cameroon's 10 regional capitals, sampling 10,000 individuals aged 5 years or older. We employed a parallel SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing algorithm (WANTAI ELISA and Abbott Architect) to improve both the positive predictive value and negative predictive value of seroprevalence. The overall weighted and adjusted seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies across the 10 urban capitals of Cameroon was 10.5% (95% CI: 9.1%-12.0%) among participants aged ≥5 years. Of the 9332 participants, 730 males (13.1%, 95% CI: 11.5%-14.9%) had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies compared to 293 females (8.0%, 95% CI: 6.8%-9.3%). Among those who reported a comorbidity at the time of testing, 15.8% (95% CI: 12.8%-19.4%) were seropositive. We estimated that over 2 million SARS-CoV-2 infections occurred in the 10 regional capitals of Cameroon between October and December 2020, compared to 21,160 cases officially reported at that time translating to one laboratory-confirmed case being reported for every 110 SARS-CoV-2 infections across the 10 urban capitals. This study's findings point to extensive and under-reported circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in Cameroon-an almost 100-fold more cases compared to the number of cases reported to the World Health Organization. This finding highlights the importance of conducting serosurveys, especially in settings where access to testing may be limited and to repeat such surveys as part of pandemic tracking.

Identifying the spatial heterogeneity of housing financialization in China: Insights from a multiscale geographically weighted regression

With the deepening linkage between housing and finance, the financial attributes of housing have been increasing. Thus, housing financialization has become a worldwide phenomenon that is gradually emerging in China's real estate market and thus cannot be ignored. The amount of urban capital is an important manifestation of financialization, but only a few studies have considered the spatial heterogeneity of impact of urban capital amount—represented by loan balances (LOAN) on housing prices. To fill this gap, this study builds a dataset of housing prices and influencing factors for county-level units using 2109 counties in China and analyzes the spatial scope and heterogeneity of housing financialization. Results show that globally, LOAN has a significant positive effect on housing prices, and the impact direction is in line with theoretical expectations. Locally, spatial heterogeneity exists for the impact of LOAN on housing prices, and the phenomenon of housing financialization is mainly observed in China's eastern coastal area. This study can help enhance the understanding of the spatial constraints on the impact of LOAN on housing prices and the spatial heterogeneity of housing financialization in China. Moreover, it provides a theoretical basis for policymakers to formulate spatially differentiated housing policies.

Urbanization without guarantees: articulation, rentier capitalism and occupancy on the agrarian urban frontier

ABSTRACT This article engages with the work of Stuart Hall to examine conditions of agrarian city-making on India’s urban frontier. The article draws on Hall’s writings on articulation and marxist method to propose an approach to studying the urban frontier “without guarantees’. That is without a priori presumption of the total consolidation of the non-urban to a financial-capitalist urban fabric. Examining India’s agrarian-urban frontier, the article argues that the expansion of capitalist urbanization is being commanded, appropriated, and rejected by a decidedly agrarian set of actors, social relations, and technologies. On the frontier both the state and capital are subject to a series of agrarian articulations: bargains, compromises, and reformulations with agrarian and non-urban society that alter the very character of urbanization itself and challenge the received grammars of critical urban theory. In contrast to “extended urbanisation” approaches that assert the primacy of macrogeographical capitalist intentions, the article argues following Hall, that these urban-agrarian articulations on the frontier are fundamentally uncertain, requiring specific political and ideological work to sustain and frequently subject to collapse and resettlement. The final section of the article outlines three core conditions of agrarian-urban articulation in the present conjuncture: rentier capitalism; land occupancy and territorial blockade.

Book review: The Commonist Horizon. Futures Beyond Capitalist Urbanization. Edited by Mary N. Taylor and Noah Brehmer, 2023.

Mary N. Taylor and Noah Brehmer's latest edited book takes us on a journey to reflect on the political possibilities of commoning, a social practice that aims to take institutions and resources under direct community control. Taylor and Brehmer facilitate a dialogue about the reality of commoning across polities and cultures and pose hard questions relevant for those who strive to disentangle housing and home from market-based logics. The reflections in the five chapters of the book trace some of the crucial inflection points determining whether commoning remains a defensive tactic or becomes a transformative alternative to capital's organization of our lived environment. The authors, who research and do some forms of commoning in Serbia, the U.K., Hungary, the U.S., and Lithuania, reflect on the questions of groundedness in local history, autonomy, scalability, and inclusiveness. Taylor and Brehmer do not undertake the task of assessing the social or political impact of commoning. They encourage us to look boldly into the horizon and embrace the vision that another world—with another housing economy—is possible.

Perceptions, facilitators and barriers to the implementation of interpersonal group therapy to treat depression among people living with HIV in Senegal: a qualitative study.

Depression is highly prevalent in people living with HIV (PLWH) but remains under treated in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this context, we conducted the first study of Group Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) to treat depression in PLWH in Senegal. We assessed the perceptions and experiences of patients and group facilitators, as well as barriers to implementation. This study was conducted at the Fann National University Hospital Center in Dakar, the urban capital of Senegal. Qualitative data were collected during the implementation phase (February to June 2020 and then from January to February 2021), with a 6-month pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty-five patients and three group facilitators were individually interviewed by a socio-anthropologist. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Group IPT was perceived as successful and beneficial by patients and facilitators. Patients reported positive experiences with group IPT and sustained outcomes. Beyond improving depressive symptoms, patients reported improvements in their social and professional lives, and the development of skills to prevent relapse. Group facilitators noted the benefits of therapy for their patients and for their professional skills, reporting greater clinical competence and improved supportive skills. Challenges to intervention implementation included confidentiality and patient privacy concerns, healthcare accessibility issues, and time demands. In this first qualitative study of group IPT for depression in PLWH in Senegal, participants described both positive experiences with the intervention and challenges to its implementation. Future studies, conducted in suburban and rural communities outside of Dakar, would further inform the implementation of IPT in Senegal.

Constitutive outsides or hidden abodes? Totality and ideology in critical urban theory

In the context of hotly contested debates within critical urban theory, many scholars have recently attempted (both implicitly and explicitly) to move beyond the relational-dialectical concept of ‘totality’, taking up the notion of ‘the constitutive outside’ in its place. With this in view, this article seeks to (1) develop a critique of the ways in which the concept of the constitutive outside is deployed in these debates; and (2) to sketch another path forward – one that understands capitalist urbanisation as a distinctive moment in the evolution of a world-encompassing and internally related socio-spatial totality, while also attending to well-founded concerns among theorists of the constitutive outside regarding the question of difference and ascriptive hierarchisation. More precisely, this article will pursue a close reading of work on the constitutive outside in critical urban theory, suggesting that it effectively re-articulates longstanding and entrenched tenets of capitalist ideology, positing the image of a ‘space-time of the other’. And it will conclude with a revised conceptualisation of totality for critical urban theory, building on Nancy Fraser’s recent work on capitalism’s racialised, gendered, and ecological ‘hidden abodes’.

Assessing differential socio-demographic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban livelihood capitals in suburban Accra, Ghana

Assessing differential socio-demographic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban livelihood capitals in suburban Accra, Ghana

Institutions, urban space, and residential markets in globalizing Shanghai: A comparative study of housing sale and rental prices

ABSTRACT China’s skyrocketing residential market has raised concerns about housing affordability in metropolitan areas. Current literature usually overlooks the various mechanisms between sale and rent, which may unfold more fundamental structural forces beyond housing location and attributes. This study constructs an analytical framework to investigate how global, regional, and local development contexts, including institutional forces, urban spatial structure, human capital, and neoclassical factors, affect apartment sales and rental prices in Shanghai, China. These factors collectively shape the city’s residential market, but renters and buyers may show different housing preferences. Such variation is highly related to their residential status, as renters may prioritize job opportunities while buyers value service amenities more. From the spatial perspective, suburban areas are more inclusive than urban centers, as globalization and institutional factors have exacerbated inequality in the residential housing market in urban centers, and homeownership is changing the patterns of segregation in Chinese cities.

Urban state venturism: On state-led venture capital investments in the urban process of capital accumulation

Research on the urban process of capital accumulation has typically examined the state and capital as separate actors. This distinction is problematized by a long-standing, increasingly prominent but largely overlooked attempt by state institutions to drive urban development through venture capital (VC) investments. Conceptualized as urban state venturism in this paper, state-driven VC investments reflect at once a riskier extension of urban entrepreneurialism (through their speculative construction of place) and a transposition of state institutions into firm-level drivers of capitalist urbanization (through their roles as profit-oriented investors). To advance research on the urban process of capital accumulation through examining these imbricated state roles, this paper presents a new research agenda that comprises three dimensions, namely (i) the rationale of urban state venturism, (ii) the distribution of profits and risks, and (iii) the extent to which urban state venturism reflects state institutions’ intrinsic commitment to a ‘developmentalist’ ideology. In turn, the agenda foregrounds the value of assessing ‘new’ state capitalism through urban state venturism.

Corn and the range: rethinking ranching, agriculture and the feedlot

ABSTRACT Debates about modern beef production suffer from a major historical blind spot. For over a century, the feedlot relied on a closed nutrient loop to sustain soil fertility in the United States Corn Belt. Driven by industrial capitalist urbanization, a cattle-grain-beef complex shaped land use, tenure systems, management practices and environmental politics on the expanding frontier, sacrificing the tall-grass prairies and fracturing agrarian resistance to corporate concentration and the Union Stock Yards. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) emerged after 1950, breaking the nutrient cycle of the original feedlot and turning the relationship between ranching and agriculture into a dysfunctional one.

Reimagining modern politics in the European mountains: confronting the traditional commons with the neo-rural conception of the common good

Since at least the 1970s, the countryside of Western Europe has been the site of a myriad of “new” communal initiatives. Rural areas that were abandoned during the last century have witnessed the arrival of new inhabitants. These newcomers often flock to the mountains escaping urban lifestyles characterized by individualism, mass-oriented livelihoods, and isolation. Many of these individuals move to areas like the Catalan Pyrenees, where common property and communal institutions have had a strong historical presence. In embracing rural life, these new inhabitants are looking for a more integrated social life in which the commons are, on the one hand, a form of collective private property, and, on the other, represent a more egalitarian way of life in which contributing to the collective effort is not only an efficient way of dealing with particularly harsh ecological conditions, but also an ideological statement that defines the community as something different: an alternative to urban capitalism. Two definitions of the commons are colliding in these mountains; two longstanding lines of political thought are converging and establishing a dialogue that is not always easy: (1) traditional ideologies of land ownership that defined common property over the centuries, not based on economic equality, but on private property and locally shared responsibility on the economic base of the community; and (2) utopian anti-capitalism that views the commons as an alternative mode of social organization and ownership based on egalitarianism.

Spatializing social reproduction theory: integrating state space and the urban fabric

This article sets out to extend the core ideas of social reproduction theory (SRT), an increasingly influential strand of scholarship within and beyond critical geopolitical economy. It suggests that while SRT productively addresses longstanding debates within Marxist feminism, it has yet to adequately theorize the shifting spatialities of reproductive work and the relationship between social reproduction and the state. To address this relative weakness, this article stages a dialogue between SRT and the emergent neo-Lefebvrian literature on state space and the multiscalar geographies of capitalist urbanization. The primary claim at stake in this context is that reproductive work is periodically and systematically reorganized and re-spatialized in relation to the broader crisis dynamics of capital, and the reweaving of the urban fabric; and, moreover, that this process of reorganization and re-spatialization is profoundly mediated, managed, and canalized by state spatial practices. To concretize this theorization, this article closes with a brief historical reading of US imperial expansion and urbanization between roughly 1898 and 1925.