Abstract
The first section of this introductory chapter offers some empirical and theoretical background to this edited volume. It is argued that in our contemporary world urbanisation not only refers to the territorial expansion of cities but to processes occurring in previously non-urban settings. So far, this has been studied through a variety of distinct theoretical perspectives, including Neo-Marxian accounts on planetary urbanisation, which understand these processes as inevitable outcomes of capitalism, and alternative ‘Southern’ projects based mainly on post-structural and post-colonial approaches, which emphasise local particularities of emerging urban spaces . The second part of this chapter outlines both the extent to which the different contributions in this edited volume engage with these different theoretical perspectives, mainly through empirical contextualisation, and how they seek to overcome problems of universalism and particularism in the study of emerging urban spaces . Reflecting on the different contributions of this edited volume, the final section proposes guidelines for future research. It calls for an ‘open reading’ of Henri Lefebvre’s ouevre and the need to mobilise what is referred to herein as (1) the right to the urban, (2) difference and pluralism , and (3) the naturalisation of the urban . Taken together, we argue that this enables us to view the urban as a relational and co-produced configuration, which is in constant interaction both with other urban settings elsewhere and with the environment in which it is situated.
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Notes
- 1.
For a review of advocators of a city-centric approach, see Scott and Storper (2015).
- 2.
For an even more capitalocentric reading, see Wilson and Bayón’s (2016) work on planetary urbanisation, here defined as a process of universalising ‘black hole’ capitalism.
- 3.
Yiftachel (2016: 283) draws on the contents of a short story by Jorje Borges who defined the ‘Aleph’ as the ‘vista point from which every little detail about the world can be seen—the places of all places’ or in his case, the ‘city of all cities’, Jerusalem.
- 4.
The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary presents six alternative meanings for the entry Nature, the first signifies all plants, animals and things that exist in the universe that are not made by humans; the second relates to the way things happen in the physical world when not controlled by humans; the third meaning refers to the usual way that a human or an animal behaves that is part of their character; the fourth relates to the basic qualities of a thing; the fifth refers to the type or kind of something; and the sixth is an adjective, related to the type of character or quality mentioned (Wehmeir 2001: 849).
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Horn, P., Cardoso, A.C., Alfaro d’Alençon, P. (2018). Introduction. In: Horn, P., Alfaro d'Alencon, P., Duarte Cardoso, A. (eds) Emerging Urban Spaces. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57816-3_1
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