Emergent urban spaces: a planetary perspective

Abstract

The session explores some of the conceptual, methodological and practical strengths and limitations of one dominant approach in contemporary urban theory – planetary urbanisation. With its main advocate being Brenner (2014), this is a neo-Lefebvrean approach, which intends to overcome dichotomies such as North and South, developed and developing, and city and countryside. It challenges bounded urbanisms and holds the key assumption that in our contemporary world everything is urban. According to Brenner (2014), the urban describes the concentration of infrastructure and populations in cities (implosions) but, simultaneously, it refers to urban features in non-urban settings (explosions). Hence, the urban represents a global condition characterised by a set of politico-economic relations associated with processes of extractivism, neoliberalism, capitalist land management, etc. Though an increasingly dominant approach in urban studies, planetary urbanisation perspectives also pose new challenges: Current research mainly set out a new research agenda but has not provided a sufficient theoretical and methodological ‘tool kit’ which allows for its application.