Public Culture· 2013Q2
Theses on Urbanization
- 438citations
- Q2SCImago
- 2013year
Short summary
This paper argues that the concept of 'the urban' has become conceptually blunted due to its generalized use, and proposes new theoretical distinctions to reinvigorate urban studies.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- The widespread use of 'urban' has diminished its conceptual specificity.
- New theoretical distinctions are needed to analyze the contemporary urban landscape.
- Proposed distinctions include practice vs. analysis categories and concentrated vs. extended urbanization.
- These frameworks aim to re-energize urban theory in the face of planetary urbanization.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
The urban has become a keyword of early twenty-first-century economic, political, and cultural discourse. But as its resonance has intensified in social science and in the public sphere, the conceptual and cartographic specificity of the urban has been severely blunted. Is there any future for a distinct field of urban theory in a world in which urbanization has been generalized onto a planetary scale? This article reflects on this state of affairs and outlines a series of theses intended to reinvigorate the theoretical framework of urban studies in relation to emergent forms of urbanization. Several conceptual distinctions — between categories of practice and categories of analysis, nominal essences and constitutive essences, and concentrated and extended urbanization — are proposed to inform possible future mappings of the planetary urban condition.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Public Culture, 2013 · DOI ↗
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Field: Archeology (Arts and Humanities)
ArcheologyArts and Humanities