City as Ideology: Reconciling the Explosion of the City Form with the Tenacity of the City Concept

@article{Wachsmuth2014CityAI,
  title={City as Ideology: Reconciling the Explosion of the City Form with the Tenacity of the City Concept},
  author={D. Wachsmuth},
  journal={Environment and Planning D: Society and Space},
  year={2014},
  volume={32},
  pages={75 - 90}
}
  • D. Wachsmuth
  • Published 2014
  • Sociology
  • Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
This paper is a theoretical reexamination of the traditional concept of the city in the context of urbanization processes that exceed it. Recent decades have seen a proliferation of new variations on the city concept, as well as calls to discard it altogether. I argue that both options are inadequate. The city has generally been understood as a category of analysis—a moment in urbanization processes—but might now be better understood as a category of practice: an ideological representation of… Expand
View on SAGE
95 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
4
Background Citations
43
Methods Citations
1

95 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Urbanization and the City Image in Lowry at Tate Britain: Towards a Critique of Cultural Cityism
This article explores cultural cityism at a time when a more expansive, ‘planetary’ urbanization is argued to have superseded ‘the city’ as the dominant urban form. It takes an essentially Lefebvrian… Expand
The Urbanism of Exception: The Dynamics of Global City Building in the Twenty-First Century
This book challenges the conventional (modernist-inspired) understanding of urbanization as a universal process tied to the ideal-typical model of the modern metropolis with its origins in the grand… Expand
The future of the city centre: Urbanisation, transformation and resilience – a tale of two Newcastle cities
Recent debates over the content and theoretical orientation of urban studies act as a strong reminder that the nature and existence of the city as a form of spatial urban agglomeration is changing.… Expand
From the city lens toward urbanisation as a way of seeing: Country/city binaries on an urbanising planet
In recent years, three superficially distinct urban subfields have made parallel efforts to incorporate the city’s traditional ‘outsides’ into urban research. Urban political ecology, American urban… Expand
Southern Theory without a North: City Conceptualization as the Theoretical Metropolis
There have been calls to broaden urban theory to incorporate learnings from the Southern or ordinary cities (periphery). These calls are often placed as a counter to the hegemony of the Northern… Expand
Thinking cities/the urban through elsewhere: comparative tactics for a more global urban studies
With many scholars eager to throw aside the multiple constraints on theorybuilding practices lingering after a period of Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies, there is much creative energy for… Expand
Towards a new epistemology of the urban?
New forms of urbanization are unfolding around the world that challenge inherited conceptions of the urban as a fixed, bounded and universally generalizable settlement type. Meanwhile, debates on the… Expand
Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism
The concept of planetary urbanization has emerged in recent years amongst neo- Lefebvrian urban scholars who see urbanization as a process taking place at all spatial scales. This article analyses… Expand
Urbanization and Migration: From City to Camp?
This chapter examines the notion of planetary urbanization, from its roots in the work of Henri Lefebvre through to more recent scholarship. It aims to consider how migration is connected with… Expand
City in Code: The Politics of Urban Modeling in the Age of Big Data
Abstract A model is “any representation or concept that helps us to understand the world whenever common sense or direct observations are inadequate.” Common sense and direct observation often prove… Expand
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 78 REFERENCES
Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture
Abstract Cities exist in a world of cities and thus routinely invite a comparative gesture in urban theorizing. However, for some decades urban studies have analytically divided the world of cities… Expand
Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism
Urban political ecology (UPE), an offshoot of political ecology that emerged in the late 1990s, has had two major impacts on critical urban studies: it has introduced critical political ecology to… Expand
The ‘Urban Age’ in Question
Foreboding declarations about contemporary urban trends pervade early twenty-first century academic, political and journalistic discourse. Among the most widely recited is the claim that we now live… Expand
The Urban Question: Reflections on Henri Lefebvre, Urban Theory and the Politics of scale
Since the classic work of Castells (1972), the 'urban question' has been a focal point for debate among critical urban researchers. Against the background of contemporary debates on globalization and… Expand
Theses on Urbanization
In the early 1970s, a young Marxist sociologist named Manuel Castells, then living in exile in Paris, began his soontobe-classic intervention, The Urban Question, by declaring his “astonishment” that… Expand
The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment
  • R. Park
  • Sociology
  • American Journal of Sociology
  • 1915
It will be convenient for the point of view proposed in this paper to regard the city, not as a mere congeries of persons and social arrangements, but as an institution. An institution, according to… Expand
Defining the urban
In everyday discourse, the term ‘urban’ causes few problems, but it certainly has for social theory. While the paper accepts the recent consensus that the term no longer serves to refer to a distinct… Expand
Recasting the City into City-Regions: Place Promotion, Competitiveness Benchmarking and the Quest for Urban Supremacy
This essay critically examines twenty-two studies designed to measure the competitiveness of cities and city-regions. We suggest that while this research may show statistical correlations between… Expand
The environment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban ‘sustainability;fix’ in Manchester and Leeds
There is evidence that the politics of economic development in the post‐industrial city is increasingly bound up with the ability of urban elites to manage ecological impacts and environmental… Expand
Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale
This and the subsequent papers in this special issue set out the contours of Marxian urban political ecology and call for greater research attention to a neglected field of critical research that,… Expand
...
1
2
3
4
5
...