Urban Revolution Research Articles

Governing the Twenty-First Century Metropolis and Transforming Territory

This article puts forward the argument that urban governance in metropolises in the global South has entered a territorial moment. There is a subtle shift of emphasis underway in many Southern metropolises as municipal governments increasingly focus on transforming urban space rather than ‘improving’ populations. This shift away from Foucauldian disciplinary tactics—i.e. fixing people in place, classifying them into populations and acting upon them—is driven by political economic circumstances. Many of these cities have abundant reserves of capital and labor but they remain intractably disconnected; the former is invested in real estate and infrastructure, while a large number of urban residents struggle to sell their labor power for a wage. In this context municipal governments seek to manage the transformation of urban space, the urban governance strategies for which are presented here in a typology ranging from modest efforts to control places that were hitherto beyond the reach of the state through to the wholesale creation of new cities. Ultimately this article demonstrates that any attempt to ‘reload’ urban studies must focus on the governance of territory—i.e. the reconfiguration of power and place—in metropolises at the frontier of the urban revolution.

Mob deep: The underground current of urban revolution

Mob deep: The underground current of urban revolution

Resenha: Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution . London & New York: Verso, 2012

Resenha: Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution . London & New York: Verso, 2012

Mavericks

New books discussed in this article:Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The first 5,000 years. New York: Melville House.Graeber, David. 2013. The democracy project: A history, a crisis, a movement. London: Allan Lane.Harvey, David. 2011. The enigma of capital and the crises of capitalism. London: Profile Books.Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution. London: Verso.Harvey, David. 2013. A companion to Marx’s Capital, volume 2. London: Verso.Lazar, Sian. 2008. El Alto, rebel city: Self and citizenship in Andean Bolivia. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.

Rebel Cities: from the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

Rebel Cities: from the Right to the City to the Urban RevolutionDavid Harvey,New York: Verso, 2012.

Religious Autonomy and Religious Entrepreneurship: An Evolutionary-Institutionalist’s Take on the Axial Age

AbstractThrough the first millenniumbce, religio-cultural revolutions occurred in China, Greece, Israel, and India. Commonly referred to as the Axial Age, this epoch has been identified by some scholars as period of parallel evolution in which many of the World Religions appeared for the first time and humanity was forever changed. Axial scholarship, however, remains in an early stage as many social scientists and historians question the centrality of this era in the human story, while other unsettled debates revolve around what was common across each case. The paper below considers the Axial Age from an evolutionary-institutionalist’s perspective: what was axial was (1) the first successful religio-cultural entrepreneurs in human history and, thereby, (2) the evolution of autonomous religious spheres distinct from kinship and polity. Like the Urban Revolutions that qualitatively transformed human societies 3,000 years prior, the Axial Age represents a reconfiguration of the physical, temporal, social, and symbolic space in irreversible ways.

Writing Resistance: Sleeplessness, Poetry and the Right to the City under Financial Capitalism

A review of Berardi, Franco “Bifo.” 2012. The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance. Los Angeles/ Cambridge: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press. Crary, Jonathan. 2013. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London/New York: Verso. Harvey, David. 2013. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London/New York: Verso.

Book Review: Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

Book Review: Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

Book Review: Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to Urban Revolution

David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to Urban Revolution, Verso Books: London and New York, 2012, pp. xviii + 187, $ 19.95.

Strategizing urbanism in the era of neoliberalization: State power reshuffling, land development and municipal finance in urbanizing China

This paper examines the new dynamism of China’s urbanization in which urbanism has been actively pursued by municipal governments as a strategy to negotiate and contest with the new power relations established by the post-reform regime in the era of neoliberalization. The research identifies the salient features of urbanization and urban land development since the 1990s, probes into their social and political origins, and evaluates the effects of Chinese urban revolutions from above on economic growth, regional inequality and social volatility. The data analysed include those gathered from the national level and from the Guangzhou metropolis in southern China. The interwoven processes of state power reshuffling, urban land development and municipal finance in contemporary China are believed to have constituted a significant and controversial case for critical evaluation of the political origins of urban revolutions in the age of global urbanism and their uneven socioeconomic consequences.

India's Urban Revolution: Geographies of Displacement beyond Gentrification

This paper uses an analysis of key dynamics of sociospatial change in Indian cities to offer a sympathetic critique of recent efforts to extend gentrification theory into the Global South. Despite the postcolonial overtures of this new, Southern gentrification literature, the paper argues that the global search for gentrification risks following a diffusionist logic that either presumes a Euro-American template, or else so sheers gentrification of its analytical specificity that it loses both its explanatory power and its political potency. The paper shows that gentrification theory operates on four implicit presumptions, which fail to characterize the primary dynamics of urban change in India. These include: (1) the presumption that lower-class displacement is driven by a reinvestment of capital into disinvested spaces; (2) a property centrism; (3) an agnosticism on the question of extraeconomic force; and (4) the presumption that land from which lower classes are displaced finds a ‘higher and better use’. A priori commitment to the gentrification analytic thus overlooks key features of urban change in contexts, like India, with property, planning, and legal systems different from the postindustrial geographies from which gentrification theory developed. The paper suggests that ‘urban revolution’, ‘enclosures’, and ‘accumulation by dispossession’, while equally abstract terms, more clearly allow for the comparative analysis of displacement.

Introduction to Henri Lefebvre's “Dissolving City, Planetary Metamorphosis”

Henri Lefebvre published this short, enigmatic essay in Le Monde diplomatique in 1989, two years before his death, presumably having written it at his family home in Navarrenx. At time he was working with his circle of younger collaborators in Groupe de Navarrenx on volume subsequently published as Du contrat de citoyennete (Lefebvre and Groupe de Navarrenx, 1990). (1) Although Dissolving city, planetary metamorphosis is brief and intended for a broad readership, it is a rich document, both as a retrospective on Lefebvre's urban thought and as an intellectual and political reference point for contemporary debates on planetary urbanization. The essay was discussed at length in a provocative recent article by Andy Merrifield (2011); it likewise serves a framing role in a newly published volume on planetary urbanization (Brenner, 2013). Within our research group on urban theory, a small team translated piece for internal circulation and discussion; we have now obtained permission from French copyright holder to publish translated text here. We are grateful to Stuart Elden for supporting this project and for offering us a venue for release of this brief but suggestive text, which is among Lefebvre's final publications. As a historical document, Dissolving is an intriguing counterpoint to Lefebvre's classic urban books from earlier decades, especially The Right to City (1996 [1968]) and The Urban Revolution (2003 [1970]). In some ways, Dissolving reaffirms themes explored at length in these earlier works: disjuncture between actually existing technocratic 'urbanism' of neocapitalism and a possibly more liberatory, humanistic urban practice of future; changing relations between centers and peripheries within urban, regional, and global spaces, mediated through destructive urban planning interventions and ineffectual strategies of state management; and uncertain fate--if not obliteration--of city as oeuvre while urban form is generalized onto world scale. But, at same time, contrast between energetic, pugnacious, and often hopeful pronouncements of The Urban Revolution and gloomy assessments of Dissolving nearly two decades later will be striking, if not disconcerting, for readers familiar with Lefebvre's previous urban writings. Indeed, Dissolving is in some ways a melancholy retrospective on Lefebvre's own previous urban work, recasting familiar themes in a grim, fin-de-siecle tone. (2) What is meaning of an urbanized planet, Lefebvre asks, if it fails to provide urbanity for its inhabitants? No longer does city appear to be the vehicle for new values and an alternative civilization (page 203); it is instead simultaneously disappearing and being generalized, as an urban fabric is extended across world, with destructive social and environmental consequences. The social relations of city are deteriorating, Lefebvre argues; urban infrastructures are being degraded; and rolling out of new information and transportation technologies is increasingly detrimental to urban life. Today, Lefebvre declares, generalization--or planetarization (page 205)--of urban has become a threat and a danger to all of humanity rather than holding promise that was celebrated ecstatically by modernist poets of previous fin-de-siecle. It is hard to escape a sense of nostalgia in Lefebvre's discussion of traditional European industrial city. When city had a strong, productive center, he declares, it belonged to workers (page 203), but suburbanization, deindustrialization, and gentrification have more recently deported working class into peripheries while destroying densely woven sociospatial fabric of working class districts (pages 203-204). Today, consequently, city's historic center persists only as a museum--an ideological projection in a world of persistent spatial commodification; it is now dominated by fake and artificial (page 204) spaces of tourism, elite consumption, staged spectacle, and property speculation. …

Barrio Women's Invited and Invented Spaces Against Urban Elitisation in Chacao, Venezuela

AbstractOutright victories against urban elitisation are rare in the current urban revolution. This article highlights how urban elitisation is confronted in Chacao, the most elite and urban part of Venezuela. Initially it reviews how this urban elitisation created the main economic, political and military strongholds of the opposition to the Bolivarian revolution. Then, in contesting it, the urban and Bolivarian revolutions feed each other through women's participation in invited and invented spaces of citizenship. From such spaces, Chacao women in their settler's movement organised struggles of insurgent citizenship to stop elitist urban renewal agendas and develop further forms of insurgent urbanism to conduct an urban renewal from below and establish a New Socialist Community for 600 families. They emerged as a revolutionary class to implement Bolivarian policies addressing the inefficiency and opportunism of the bureaucratic state and contesting urban elitisation with an anti‐capitalist and anti‐imperialist insurgent urbanism.

Tensões e contradições na construção de futuros urbanos sustentáveis: o caso de Lisboa

O artigo aborda a (in)capacidade do plano em enfrentar as mudanças de um ocidente envolto numa transição civilizacional em que emerge uma revolução urbana. Para verificar essa (in)capacidade procedeu-se à confrontação entre um conjunto de planos para Lisboa e várias histórias de futuro construídas para essa cidade depois da transição, em 2030. Constata-se que, em relação a uma cidade de Lisboa depois da revolução urbana, o plano positivista – não incoporando nem a incerteza nem o risco – dificilmente contempla cenários mais alargados e especulativos tornando-se desadequado e estruturalmente incapaz para pensar o futuro. A proximidade e da convergência entre os estudos do futuro e os estudos da cidade emerge pois como uma prioridade central para a cidade.

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. DavidHarvey. London: Verso Press, 2012. 187 pp. $19.95 cloth.

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. DavidHarvey. London: Verso Press, 2012. 187 pp. $19.95 cloth.

A Post-Creative City?*

Culturally-led urban redevelopment became the norm throughout Europe during the 1990s. It was rationalized as the idea of a creative city – a city for a new creative class – and characterized by the insertion of new art museums in post-industrial zones, the designation of cultural quarters, and the adoption of city branding strategies based on reductive images of the city as a cultural site. In some cases, local cultures were marginalized; in others, the promised new prosperity did not arrive while the aestheticisation of space led to gentrification. The creative city is not a socially coherent but – in contrast to the modernist city of public well-being – a socially divisive city, in which culture as the arts is privileged over culture as the articulation of shared values in everyday life. The 2008 financial services crisis has interrupted this trajectory, however, providing an opportunity to re-assess the idea of a creative city and the values implicit in it. Alternatives emerge in direct action – notably Occupy in 2011-12 – and activist art. Could there be a post-creative city? Could the creative imagination of diverse urban groups lead to new socio-political as well as cultural formations? That might be another urban revolution.

A heuristic for analysing and teaching literature dealing with the challenges of social justice

Transformation involves rethinking values and ways of seeing and acting, particularly as time stress compounds legacies of oppression and systematic underdevelopment in many postcolonial countries. These are exacerbated by structural challenges, as many societies are undergoing national, democratic, urban, race, class and gender revolutions simultaneously. All these challenges are aggravated by globalised systems of financial domination and mismanagement. Given these contexts, citizens and intellectuals in developing societies need more effective tools for analysing and deconstructing their challenges, and for the formidable tasks of reconstruction. Overhauling old values and systems to address pivotal challenges such as education and social justice requires metacognitive skills. Developing heuristics to enable integrated thinking, particularly in the arts (in this case English literary studies), helps students use disciplinary building blocks to address contextual challenges. This synthesising strategy is used to overcome histories of systemic violence, disempowerment, neglect, division, marginalisation and silencing in society and education.

The Dynamics of Morals. By Radhakamal Mukerjee. London: Macmillan, n.d. [1950]. Pp. xxvii+530.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Dynamics of Morals. By Radhakamal Mukerjee. London: Macmillan, n.d. [1950]. Pp. xxvii+530.Barbara CelarentBarbara CelarentUniversity of Atlantis*Another review from 2052 to share with AJS readers.—Ed. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 118, Number 6May 2013 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/671113 Views: 47Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref © 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:A. R. Vasavi Eroded Life-worlds and Emergent Assemblages: Rethinking the Sociologies/Social Anthropologies of the ‘Contemporary’, Sociological Bulletin 66, no.33 (Sep 2017): 271–285.https://doi.org/10.1177/0038022917726937Matthew W. Hughey Back to the Future, Humanity & Society 41, no.22 (Feb 2017): 269–276.https://doi.org/10.1177/0160597617694441Ashwani Saith Transforming peasantries in India and China: comparative investigations of institutional dimensions, The Indian Journal of Labour Economics 59, no.11 (Dec 2016): 85–124.https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-016-0051-2Eric Sheppard, Vinay Gidwani, Michael Goldman, Helga Leitner, Ananya Roy, Anant Maringanti Introduction: Urban revolutions in the age of global urbanism, Urban Studies 52, no.1111 (Aug 2015): 1947–1961.https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098015590050

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

‘Citizens and comrades can march together in the anti-capitalist struggle’ argues David Harvey in his newest book, Rebel Cities (2012, p. 153). This image represents its main argument: cities are the locus of surplus value absorption and are themselves an ongoing process of value creation. As a capitalist process of value creation, cities are cleaved by class struggle. On the one side, the bourgeois who seeks conquering spaces and control through property; on the other side, a wide variety of workers who actually build cities but are confronted with different forms of exclusionary practices and dispossessions. Harvey would argue that these processes are also revolutionary seeds. The right to the city is ‘a right to change and reinvent the city more after our hearts' desire’ (p. 4), and this requires the achievement of ‘greater democratic control over the production and use of the surplus’ (p. 22). In this book, Harvey offers some theoretical analyses on potential liberating alternatives.

Deviant Practices: Technological Re-codings of the City through Radical Play

By critically analysing recent explorations into walking the city as a creative and politicised practice, this paper illustrates how mobile devices can be used as tools for radical play and to encourage subversive use of public spaces. Building on Henri Lefebrve’s Writings on Cities (1993) and The Urban Revolution, (2003) this paper will offer new types of technologised mapping as a politicised performative practice that enacts participants ‘right to the city’. Australian performance group pvi collective’s recent piece Deviator, (2012) sited in Glasgow and other international cities, demands a subversive re-coding of the city via a technological derive, live performance and play. By positioning audiences as interventionists on the streets and encouraging a deviation from the norm the social codes of the city are reimagined and participant-spectators encounter potentially transformative interactions with public spaces.