Urban theory describes the economic, political, and social processes which affect the formation and development of City.
Overview
Theoretical discourse has often polarized between economic determinism
[Karl Marx (1976) Capital Vol 1Harmondsworth: Penguin (Original work published in 1867)] and cultural determinism
[Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Allen & Unwin (Originally published in 1905)] with scientific or technological determinism adding another contentious issue of reification. Studies across
Eastern world and
Western world nations have suggested that certain cultural values promote economic development and that the economy in turn changes cultural values.
[Allen, M. W. Ng, S. H. Ikeda, K. Jawan, J. A. Sufi, A. H. Wilson, M. & Yang, K. S. "Two Decades of Change in Cultural Values and Economic Development in Eight East Asian and Pacific Island Nations" in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology Vol. 38: pp. 247-69] Urban history were among the first to acknowledge the importance of technology in the city development.
[Hommels, A. "Studying Obducracy in the City: Toward a Productive Fusion between Technology Studies and Urban Studies" in Science Technology and Human Values, Vol. 30 No. 3: pp.323-51] Technology embeds the single most dominant characteristic of a city, and the networked character of the city is perpetuated by information technology.
[Graham, S. & Marvin, S. (1996) Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places, London: Routledge] Regardless of the deterministic stance (economic, cultural or technological), in the context of
globalization, there is a mandate to mold the city to complement the global economic structure and
Political processes
Lewis Mumford described monumental architecture as an "expression of power" seeking to produce "respectful terror".
Gigantism, geometry, and order are characteristic of cities such as Washington, D.C.,
New Delhi,
Beijing and Brasília.
Economic capital and globalization
The Industrial Revolution was accompanied by
urbanization in Europe and the United States in the 19th century.
studied
Manchester, which was being transformed by the
cotton industry.
He noted how the city was divided between wealthy areas and working class areas, which were physically separated from one another (and the people living in those areas could not see each other easily).
The city was therefore a function of capital.
Georg Simmel studied the effect of the urban environment on the individuals living in cities, arguing in The Metropolis and Mental Life that the increase in human interaction affected relationships.
Henri Lefebvre argued in the 1960s and 1970s that urban space is dominated by the interests of and capitalism.
Economic sustainability
Urbanomics can spill over beyond the city parameters. The process of globalization extends its territories into global city regions. Essentially, they are territorial platforms (metropolitan extensions from key cities, chain of cities linked within a state territory or across inter-state boundaries and arguably; networked cities and/or regions cutting across national boundaries) interconnected in the globalized economy. Some see global city-regions, rather than global cities, as the nodes of a global network.
[Scott, A. J. (ed.) (2001) Global City-Regions, Oxford: Oxford University Press][Richard Sennett (1990) The Conscience of the Eye, the Design and Social Life of Cities, London: Norton & Company]
The rules of engagement are built on economic sustainability – the ability to continuously generate wealth. The cornerstones of this economic framework are the following ‘4C’ attributes: (1) currency flow for trading, (2) commoditization of products and services in supply chain management, (3) command centre function in orchestrating interdependency and monitoring executions, and (4) consumerization. Unless, decoupling the economy from these attributes can be demonstrated; symbolic capital expressions, as legitimate as they may be, must accept the domineering status of urbanomics.
Revisiting economic measurements
Arguably, the culprit of this economic entrapment is the high-consumption lifestyle synonymous with wealth. The resolve may well be that ‘less is more’ and that true welfare lies not in a rise in production and income. As such, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is increasingly being questioned and considered inaccurate and inadequate. GDP includes things that do not contribute to sustainable growth, and excludes non-monetary benefits that improve the welfare of the people. In response, alternative measures have been proposed, including the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
[Talberth, J. Cobb, C. & Slattery, N. (2006) "The Genuine Progress Indicator 2006 – Executive Summary" in Redefining Progress http://www.rprogress.org/publications/2007/GPI2006_ExecSumm.pdf Accessed 16 May 09] and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW).
[Hanley, N. Moffat, I. Faichney, R. and Wilson, M. (1999) "Measuring Sustainability: A Time Series of Alternative Indicators for Scotland" in Ecological Economics, 28(1) pp.55-73]
See also
External links
Notes
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Harding, Alan; Talja Blokland (2014) Urban Theory: A Critical Introduction to Power, Cities and Urbanism in the 21st Century, London: Sage.
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Aseem Inam, Designing Urban Transformation New York and London: Routledge, 2013. .
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Papageorgiou, Y. & Pines, D. (1999) An Essay on Urban Economic Theory, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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Steingart, G. (2008) The War for Wealth. The True Story of Globalization or Why the Flat World is Broken, New York: McGraw Hill.
