2009
Throughout the book, the author regarded urban as a totality, a global phenomenon,shaping and influencing all the society. The urbanization process hasn’t completed yet; theconvergence of all the fragmentation science, which allows us to grasp the totality of theurban, seems impossible. It is therefore full of possibility. To capture this possibility, hesuggested us to change from old ways of thinking, extrapolating from the agrarian and industrial “revolutions” to ones that enable us to realize the reality of our current revolution,the urban. His book made use of a number of propositions and concepts to draw a better understanding of the urban phenomenon and urban space. In this essay, I just summarizeand discuss some of the interesting points, which run the main flow of the book.
From the city to urban society
Review
Throughout the book, the author assumed the existence of a virtual object, “urban society”which he claimed as the society that results from industrialization. The word “urban society”is used instead of “postindustrial society” to indicate the tendencies, orientations andvirtualities rather than any preordained reality. He introduced a space-time axis whichillustrates how the complete urbanization takes place. He presented this process runningfrom 0%, which represents the complete absence of urbanization to 100%, the completeurbanization as followed:Political City Mercantile City Industrial City Critical Zone0% 100%He took the risk of locating the political city at the point of origin on the space-time axis (thecomplete absence of urbanization). He thought agriculture is little more than gathering, andwas only formalized through pressure from the urban centers (the political city), generallyoccupied by skillful conquerors – the administrators, the rudiments of a state. Therefore, thepolitical city accompanies agriculture and the village. Market towns and suburbs, which wereinitially commercial and artisanal grew in importance and began to struggle with centers of political power for influence, forcing them to compromise, entering with them in theconstruction of a powerful urban unity. As a result, there is the formation of the mercantilecity. Then this was soon followed by the appearance of industrial capital and consequently,the industrial city. Industry gradually made its way into the city in search of capital andcapitalist, markets and an abundant supply of low-cost labor. After that, the industrial cityserves as a prelude to a critical zone, which is perceived as kind of black box. We see whatenters the box and sometimes what comes out but we do not know what goes on inside.
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