The Urban Dimension
The broad picture
Capitalism’s interest in centralising the world’s population is threefold. Firstly, land clearances transplant the populations in to cities providing unhindered access to mineral resources and the opportunity for large-scale corporate farming. This type of urbanisation also creates a highly vulnerable and mobile workforce, that can easily be exploited on the industrial farms or once in the city they end up in.
Secondly, land clearances and the urbanisation of “traditional cultures” rapidly speeds up the homogenisation, mainstreaming and assimilation of many millions of people into the dominant westernised metropolitan culture – which often then leads to ‘the village’ being seen as backwards, redundant. The fracturing and alienation also significantly reduces the chances of any resistance to the corporate land grabs.
Thirdly, the creation and management of high population, high density, and compact cities is the ideal business environment. “Citizens” are both captured and highly dependent on goods and services and the scale of the market, and the limited geography make cities the ideal business context.
Conceptual framework
[Cities are] spatial materializations of the core social pro- cesses associated with the capitalist mode of production, in- cluding, in particular, capital accumulation and class struggle. … Cities has to be understood within a macrogeographical context defined by the ongoing development and restless spatial expansion of capitalism …creeping commodification of social reproduction …post-1970s restructuring of cities and regions has to be understood as an expression and outcome of worldwide economic, political and sociospatial transformations. …global dimensions of urban restructuring
…World sys- tem theorists insisted that capitalism could be understood ad- equately only on the largest possible spatial scale, that of the world economy, and over a very long temporal period span- ning many centuries
In Castells’ influential terminology, the construction of a global “space of flows” necessarily entails major transfor- mations in the “space of places”. For example, the intensified clustering of transnational corporate headquarters and ad- vanced corporate services firms in the city core overburdens inherited land-use infrastructures, leading to new, often specu- lative, real estate booms as new office towers and high-end residential, infrastructural, cultural and entertainment spaces are constructed both within and beyond established down- town areas. Meanwhile, the need for new socio-technological infrastructures and the rising cost of office space in the global city core may generate massive spillover effects on a regional scale, as small- and medium-sized agglomerations of corporate services and back offices crystallize throughout the urban re- gion. Finally, the consolidation of such headquarter economies may also generate significant shifts within local housing mar- kets as developers attempt to transform once-devalorized in- ner city properties into residential space for corporate elites and other members of the putative “creative class”. Conse- quently, gentrification ensues in formerly working-class neigh- borhoods and deindustrialized spaces, and considerable resi- dential and employment displacement may be caused in the wake of rising rents and housing prices.
…he necessity for all cities under contemporary capi- talism to manage two divergent dynamics: their internal con- tradictions and their external integration.
…t is only recently that scholars have begun to track some of the dangers that lie in being networked per se.
n the wake of the global economic crisis of 2008-2010, the limits and contradictions of market-based, competition-oriented forms of urban governance are becom- ing more pervasive across the worldwide interurban network: crisis-tendencies and socio-ecological disruptions are no long- er contained within particular niches within the network, but spread increasingly rapidly across its various conduits.
…On a global scale, the “planet of slums” predicted by Mike Davis in the early 2000s has in- deed emerged and stands in contrast to the shining citadels of banking, culture and entertainment centers in Europe, Asia and North America.
…Across urban regions themselves, the tendency of the 100-mile city has dramatically intensified
Instead of waxing enthusiastic about mega- projects – bridges, tunnels, airports, and the cold beauty of glass-enclosed skyscrapers – which so delight the heart of big- city mayors, I am talking about people, their habitat and quali- ty of life, the claims of invisible migrant citizens and now, in yet another turn, the concept of civil society
cities function in part as tools of “global capital” that use such urban areas as “’basing points’ in the spatial organization and articulation of production and markets.
the concentration of corporate headquarters, international finance, global transport/communications, and high level business services contribute to economic growth for both upper level workers and low wage laborers (consumer services, support staff for upper level white collar workers in the aforementioned industries) but also operate ideologically as metropolises like New York, Los Angeles and Paris “are centers for the production and dissemination of information, news, entertainment and other cultural artifacts.” Additionally, as such areas draw increasing immigration, the informal economy expands since its formal counterpart can not absorb them. This point relates another aspect of world cities, their role as a point of destination for migrants and immigrants.
he demise of unionized employment and its replacement with non unionized personal/consumer services (domestics, boutiques, restaurants, entertainment) and low wage manufacturing (electronics, garments, prepared foods) further polarizes income and space as these burgeoning areas juxtapose with financial/business services. Under such pressures, middle income earners appear to be a shrinking demographic.
the costs of world city status often outweighs the “fiscal capacity of the state” which results in continuing “fiscal and social crisis” that bedevil municipal governments.
Cities are both infrastructures incorporating much capital value, and projects which are almost uniquely time-consuming. Thus there is a complex relationship between the formation and resolution of the crises capitalism is prone to, and the urban form itself.
Notice on lecture by David Harvey
This tension between the need to produce and to absorb surpluses of both capital and labor power lies at the root of capitalism’s dynamic. It also provides a powerful link to the history of capitalist urbanisation.
…it is through urbanization that surpluses get mobilized, produced, absorbed, and appropriated and it is through urban decay and social degradation that the surpluses are devalued and destroyed… Capitalism has to urbanize to reproduce itself.
…capitalist urbanization presupposes that the urban process can somehow be mobilized into configurations that contribute to the pertuation of capitalism.
…the search to produce surpluses in one place depends on the ability to realize and absorb them in another.
…The more perfect the hidden hand of interurban competition, the more the inequality between capital and labor builds and the more unstable capitalism becomes. Heightened competition is a way into rather than out of capitalist crises in the long run.
… more and more cities becomes centers of mercantilist endeavour in a world of shrinking production possibilities
…bringing the Third World back home is not an easy follow-up to Keynesian style urbanization.
The Issue
The job of capitalism is to produce more and more wealth, in turn consume more and more resources, and find right places where to market the mass produced wealth. Urban centres , by their very nature of formation are highly resource consumptive, and serve as the best markets. As per an estimate, a middle class urban resident consumes 30 times more resources than a typical rural resident. Certainly, urbanisation is a capitalist’s best friend. In nutshell- urbanisation and capitalism work complementary to each other- with by products like global warming, loss of bio diversity, degradation and depletion of natural resources etc. Problem is- does the living planet have so much resources, so as to accomodate entire population of the world in urban centres. The developing countries still have huge population in villages. These rural people live in “ preserve and use” mode i.e . they are less invasive on the living planet and preserve the resources from which they consume. As an urban consumer, the footprints of our consumption go far and wide, the magnitude is unparalleled. David Harvey’s writeup help one understand how urban consumption fuels economy and is a capitalist’s best friend- but the questions are - for how long ? with what impact? Do we take our economics to the realm of survival of living planet ?
Diwan Singh in comment on David Harvey
Forced Urbanisation - The Urban Industry
…making all life a commodity… …paved paradise…
The land clearances of the world’s population and our centralisation into cities has been systematically championed and actively advocated for. The result of the campaigns means the majority of the world’s population now lives on just 3-4 per cent of Earth’s land surface
The Urban Industry are, knowingly or unknowingly, marshaling the world off open, verdant and resource rich lands and in to barren, highly controlled, unequal and densely populated urban areas. It is important to be clear the herding and centralisation of the world’s population in to urban areas is by no means natural or inevitable, and it most certainly isn’t an “evolutionary step”
…contemporary cities are in fact creators, incubators and perpetuators of poverty and inequality. The urbanisation of the world should not be celebrated.
…These facts are in direct contrast to and conflict with the lavishly sponsored meta-narrative of The Urban Industry that repeats over and over that cities are centers of innovation, creativity, happiness, good health and, even astonishingly the cause and the solution for global warming.
Alienation and Megascale Urbanisation
Concentration and centralisation According to Marx, capital has the tendency for concentration and centralisation in the hands of the wealthy. Marx explains: “It is concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few large capitals…. Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another place been lost by many…. The battle of competition is fought by cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of commodities demands, caeteris paribus, on the productiveness of labour, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger capitals beat the smaller. It will further be remembered that, with the development of the capitalist mode of production, there is an increase in the minimum amount of individual capital necessary to carry on a business under its normal conditions. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd into spheres of production which Modern Industry has only sporadically or incompletely got hold of. Here competition rages…. It always ends in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals partly pass into the hands of their conquerors, partly vanish.”
Charter Cities
…this is a unique time in human history when it is possible to start many new cities because there is an enormous, unmet demand for city life.
In one sense, the essence of the idea [of charter cities] is the notion of a Startup City. You have a chance to start a city anew. First, a Charter City has to be big. Viable cities will have millions of residents”
One of the main concerns … is the increase by several billion in total urban population that the world needs to accommodate. There are two ways we can do this — expand existing cities or start new cities. So we need urban expansion because billions of people will be moving to cities.
Right now, there is an unmet demand for urban opportunity by billions of people. If all of this demand were met by new cities, we could have hundreds of them, each on the scale of 10 million or more residents.
Creative Cities
The cognitive-cultural dimensions of contemporary capitalism are identified
by reference to its leading sectors, basic technologies, labor relations
systems, and market structures.
Cognitive-cultural systems of production and work come to ground preeminently
in large city-regions.
This state of affairs is manifest in the diverse clusters of high-technology
sectors, service functions, neo-artisanal manufacturing activities,
and cultural-products industries that are commonly found in these regions.
It is also manifest in the formation of a broad stratum of high-skill,
cognitive-cultural employees in urban areas.
Many of these employees are engaged in distinctive forms of work-based
learning, creativity, and innovation.
At the same time, the cognitive-cultural economy in contemporary cities is
invariably complemented by large numbers of low-wage, low-skill jobs,
and the individuals drawn into these jobs are often migrants from developing
countries.
The ideological-political ramifications of this situation are subject to
analysis in the context of a critique of the currently fashionable idea of
the “creative city.”
I advance the claim that we need to go beyond advocacies about local economic
development that prescribe the deployment of packages of selected amenities
as a way of attracting elite workers into given urban areas.
Instead, I propose that policy-makers should pay more attention to the
dynamics of the cognitive-cultural production system as such,
and that in the interests of shaping viable urban communities in contemporary
capitalism we must be more resolute in attempts to rebuild sociability,
solidarity, and democratic participation.
Global/Globalizing Cities
…Being in a city becomes synonymous with being in an extremely intense and dense information loop.
…the more headquarters outsource their most complex, unstandardized functions, particularly those subject to uncertain and changing markets, the freer they are to opt for any location,because less work actually done in the headquarters is subject to agglomeration economies. This further underlines that the key sector specifying the distinctive production advantages of global cities is the highly specialized and networked services sector.
…the economic fortunes of these cities become increasingly disconnected from their broader hinterlands or even their national economies. We can see here the formation, at least incipient, of transnational urban systems. the growing numbers of high-level professionals and high profit making specialized service firms have the effect of raising the degree of spatial and socio-economic inequality evident in these cities.
…the growing informalizarion of a range of economic activities which find their effective demand in these cities, yet have profit rates that do not allow them to compete for various resources with the high-profit making firms at the top of the system.
The Rural Dimension
Mali
Memo
Commodification Gig economy *Overspecialisation Gagns menneske
Oslos vekst
Markets and coordination