Postmodern Urbanism

Taruna Bansal

Component-I(A) - Personal Details

Role Name Affiliation

Principal Investigator Prof. Masood Ahsan Siddiqui Department of Geography,

Jamia Millia Islamia,
New Delhi
Paper Coordinator, if any Dr. Deeksha Bajpai Dayal Singh College, Delhi
University
Content Writer/Author Dr.Taruna Bansal Department of Geography,
(CW) Jamia Millia Islamia,
New Delhi
Content Reviewer (CR) Dr. Deeksha Bajpai Dayal Singh College, Delhi
University
Language Editor (LE)

Component-I (B) - Description of Module

Items Description of Module

Subject Name Geography

Paper Name Urban Geography

Module Name/Title Post modern Urbanism

Module Id UG-05

Pre-requisites

Objectives To understand the doctrine of post-modernity in urban

geography
Keywords Urban geography, Geography, post modernism,
 Postmodern Urbanism
Taruna Bansal

Introduction
1. Meaning of Post – Modernism in Geography
The doctrine of post-modernity had a significant influence on human geography; thus
expected consequences were likely to be there. Geography a discipline which focuses on the
spatial distribution of phenomena or spatial expressions and their representation on the globe,
also found itself in opposition to the grand narratives of the very principles upon which the
whole edifice of modern episteme and thinking is erected. The core foundations of the
modernism were radically questioned and Human Geography, with focus on ‘space’ was not
to be left out and therefore, geography in general also bracketed under ‘antifoundationalism’
an insignia of postmodern era.
Post 1980s, saw distinguished and substantial changes in the subject. These changes
were both due to responses to internal development within the subject as well as due to the
challenge thrown to it from the outside of the ambit of the subject.
Last decades of the twentieth century saw a growing opposition to the Geographers
associated with the positivists and spatial analysis and interpretation of the subject. However,
precisely, around the same time disenchantment among the progressive geographers with
radical Marxist theorists, who still had strong belief in the grand explanations and scientific
analysis, rooted in modernist tradition. These Marxist / radical critical theorists did give least
importance to ‘subjectivity’, these geographers while furthering the concept of social class
and social class struggle tried to universalize it, completely ignoring the context and spatial
dimensions/ individual identities.
Post modern period or epoch is characterized by new cultural logic and radical
reconfiguration of the concept of space. Post modernity, therefore as C. Minca in his
Postmodernism/ post modern Geography reiterates ‘is not seen as singular manifestation,
awaiting discovery and description by geographers: it was envisioned, rather, as a complex of
diverse perspective, processes, and objects, a confused and convoluted collage of people and
objects undecipherable with the analytical tools of the past’ (1989:45). A postmodern
geography would involve: a resistance to paradigmatic closure and rigidly categorical
thinking; the capacity to combine creatively what in the past was considered to be
antithetical/uncombinable; the rejection of totalizing "deep logics" that blinker our way of
seeing; the search for new ways to interpret the empirical world and tear away its layers of
ideological mystification.
The early years of post modern geography were punctuated with fresh focus on new
sets of research questions; one such emerging field was in the field of urban architecture or
design, later came to be known as post modern city. Ideally represented through the
manifestation of new urban landscape and distinct urban mosaic, the post modern city of Los
Angeles of western United States of America, became the new foci of research in
urbanization and urbanism. The curious phenomenon is no longer be seen through the
perspective of singular logic encompassing one exclusive definition of the city style; instead
‘Post modern urbanism’ conceived city as a complex set of socio- spatial identity represented
through architectural designs in complete departure from the established norms, standards
and engineering technologies representing the modern and post structural age.
Along with interest in the city (and its transformations), geographers trained their
focus of research on the broader changes occurring in the new age society and hypothesized
the advent of post modern era. Thus one can say that post modernism is not an overnight
revolution or a day’s affair. It is something which has been banging on our doors from last
three decades; we must get used to it.
In human geography per se over time it has become integral and indispensible part of
the geographical literature. The most significant influence of this has been on urban
geography; it dates back to 1980s when in 1983, the Journal ‘Environment and Planning D.
Society and Space, published write ups on post modern urbanism. Examples can be cited of
writings of eminent post-modernists like Dear’s ‘Post modern Urban planning’ and Soja’s
‘Los Angeles’ Post modern’ Spatialities’, which laid a base in post modern intellectual
discourse within geography. For him "modernization" is "a continuous process of
restructuring of the society that is influenced by the historical and geographical dynamics of
modes of production. These produce a society that has been recomposed both in time and
space and is visible in concrete forms’’ (1989). According to him the traces of postmodernity
can be located in the late 1960s; along with the geographical restructuring that took three
different paths of spatialization: posthistoricism, reassertion of space in the ontological
struggle; postfordism, an increasingly flexible, disorganized regime of capitalist
accumulation; and postmodernism, companying cultural and ideological reconfiguration
changing how we experience social being. All of these are simultaneously needed to solve the
geographical puzzle. He views the intelligent world and its life “as a multilayered system of
created nodal regions, a configuration of differentiated and hierarchically organized locales"
Such a life-world includes various scales initiating from the human body, through the urban
and the nation-state, to the whole social world and everywhere it is soaked with Foucault’s
power and authority.
Some of the writings that established post modernism as a tradition of enquiry in
geography include: Harvey’s ‘Post modernism and the American city’, David Ley’s ‘Post
modern urbanism in Vancouver’, Dear’s ‘Post modern Challenge: restructuring of human
Geography’ and Gregory’s ‘Areal differentiation and Post modern Geography’. It can be said
that as a discipline geography was washed by the post modern wave. This can be rightly
authenticated by the number of works published with this consciousness. Three themes can
be identified:
a) Urban Cultural landscape and place-making - Anderson a. Gale 1992, Beauregard
1989, Dear 1989, Duncan 1990, Glennie a. Thrift 1992, Hopkins 1990, Robins
1991, Shields 1989, Short 1989, Zukin 1991, and the essays in Barnes a. Duncan
1992, Sorkin 1992, and Wolch a. Dear 1989.
b) Economic Landscape of post- Fordism (an era of flexible specialization that
emphasizes on global-local connections and spatial division of labour) - Barnes a.
Curry 1992, Dunford 1990, Gertler 1988, Leborgne a. Lipietz 1988, Sayer a.
Walker 1992, Schoenberger 1988, Scott 1988, Slater 1992a 1992b, STORPERa.
Walker 1989, Webber 1991
c) Philosophical and Theoretical Discourse (this in with reference to space and
linguistic disputes) - Curry 1992, Doel 1992, Folch-Serra 1989, Hannah a.
Strohmayer 1991, Harris 1991, Jones et al. 1993, Milroy 1989, Peet a. Thrift 1988,
Philo 1992, Pile 1990, Schatzki 1991, Scott a. Simpson-Housley 1989, Smith
1989.
Apart from these themes, four other topical areas can be identified where the post modern
consciousness was manifested. These are –
d) Problems of representation in geographical/ethnographic writing - Barnes a.
Duncan 1992, Crang 1992, Jackson 1991, Marcus 1992, Matless 1992 a, Katz
1992, Keith 1992, Reichert 1992),
 in cartography (Harley 1989, Pickles 1992, Wood 1992), and
  in art (Bonnett 1992, Daniels 1992);
e) The politics of postmodernism both historical and contemporary - Dalby 1991,
Driver 1992, Graham 1992, Hepple 1992, O'Tuathail 1992, Pile a. Rose 1992),
 feminist geography's discontentment with postmodernism (Bondi a.
Domosh 1992, Christopherson 1989, Domosh 1991, Pratt 1992),
 orientalism and postcolonialism (Driver 1992, Gregory 1991), and
 the law and critical legal studies
f) An emphasis on the construction of the individual and the boundaries of self
including human psychology and sexuality respectively - Bishop 1992, Hogget
1992, Geltmaker 1992, Moos 1989, Knopp 1992, Valentine 1993 and
g) A reassertion of the questions with regard to nature and the environment -
Bordessa 1993, Emel 1991, Fitzsimmons 1989, Matless 1991, 1992 a, 1992b,
which has taken many forms, including a fresh look at the relationships between
place and health (Gesler 1993, Kearns 1993).
Therefore, one can say that by 1991, post modernism had acquired a definite place in
geographical thinking though it faced several contentions.

2. Postmodern Urbanism
Postmodern urbanism is a phenomenon based on the return of middle-income people from
suburbs to cities. Often this is accompanied by gentrification, the upgrading of older, run-
down dwellings into modern and fashionable residences. Soja uses his post modernism in the
context of a city to analyse the patterns that exist in the city as well the historical processes
that have resulted in these patterns.
In the north, we are also seeing a significant out-migration of African Americans who
started moving into northern cities in two huge waves, one following each of the World
Wars. By and large, these out-migrants are moving back to the south and to rural and
suburban areas.
Postmodern urbanism also includes the concept of "infill." This refers to demolishing
older buildings in the city's core and replacing them with new Commercial buildings or "self-
contained" urban villages. These urban villages are designed to limit the use of the
automobile, thus helping to cut back on the greenhouse gases that are causing global
warming. Postmodern urbanism emphasizes new concepts in architecture, living space, and
more open channels of communication among people.
 The concept of postmodern urbanism is based primarily on the assumption that the
global capitalist economy has fundamentally transformed in its mode of production and in its
relations of production. Such logic is imbued in Dear and Flusty (1998) with the distinction
placed on ‘flexism’ as having fundamentally altered conventional political economy. The two
trends identified within this are automation, and greater freedom of capitalist enterprises.
Automation refers to the natural revolutionizing of means of production, and the freedom of
enterprise in this case refers to its ability to circumvent barriers, regulations, and other
constraints such as distance, and commitments to establishing equilibrium with labour and
capital. The specific configuration of Fordism suited the needs of the capitalist class at that
particular time, however it was also contingent on the relative pressure being asserted by the
combined forces of production which was labour, and the power they could exercise in
negotiating for a better position. The creation of the welfare state functioned to allow
capitalism to continue while allowing certain concessions to the working class.
Postmodernism as it intersects with the rise of neoliberal economic doctrine occupies
the same ideological tendency in that they both proclaim the end of history triumphantly, and
they seek to obscure the predations of capitalism. The trends which Shearmur (2008)
highlights about the negation of the very purpose to seek knowledge, closely relates with
Fukuyama’s thesis on the end of history coinciding with the end of the cold war and resulting
in the universal victory of democratic liberalism (Fukuyama, 1989). In this view, the
questions have already been settled over who is right and wrong, therefore postmodernist
discourse adopts a moral relativist cause. This is supported in ideology, but it is also affected
in practice by the means capital asserts its authority in imposing policies which further the
interests of accumulation within a realm that can be controlled and conducive to further
accumulation.
Harvey’s theory is based on the triad – ‘space, time and money’ and emphasizes that
the fragmentation of flexible accumulation is simulated in the dispersion of politics,
philosophy and social thinking. But when he talks of post modern urbanism he concentrates
on the global level with exclusive emphasis on architecture and urban design in relation to
spaces of consumption.
For Dear (1991) we live in a world of post modern consciousness and thus it is of no
use ignoring it. He opines that the books of Soja and Harvey had demolished the vibrancy of
this discourse and even led to its premature death. This is because both the writings are
undemocratic and mono-logical as their synthesis is inadequate and incomplete to answers
the raised questions. He stresses that post modernism is more about complication and
difference or variation which is very aptly reflected in the urban architecture as an urban
landscape presents a blueprint for the social world where localization and fragmentation of
social world is clearly visible. Thus, a post modern city is a space where conventional
institutions of control, authority, power and organization are not visible anymore and at the
same time no new modes of control or authority have taken their place. This creates a
vacuum, which is being filled by the new emerging socio-cultural, political and economic
relationships.

3. Los Angles School of Post-Modern Urbanism

The concept of postmodernism describes an emergent paradigm shift within mainstream
discourse. A Los Angeles school has emerged as a progenitor of postmodern discourses as
applied to urban geography studies. In Postmodern Urbanism authors Michael Dear and
Steven Flusty (1998) identify Los Angeles as the paradigmatic city which is shaping
postmodern urban processes and socio-spatial forms. Richard Shearmur (2006) in Chicago
and L.A.: A clash of Epistemologies, challenges the Los Angeles school on the ground of
unsound scientific practices which result in poorly grounded research. In The Paradigmatic
City: Post-industrial illusion and the Los Angeles school, James Curry and Martin Kenney
assess the history of Los Angeles and its present role in shaping the world economy. The sum
of research on postmodernism has effectively connected the unscientific approach employed
with its inability to produce accurate interpretation of global political economy.
Highlighting Los Angeles dominant role in the world economy and in influencing
urban development, Dear and Flusty (1998) use Los Angeles as a microcosm to understand
greater changes occurring in the global economy. Postmodern space can be characterized as a
resistance toward modernist top-down planning and seeks to cultivate older styles in the same
vein as Jane Jacobs, leading to the formation of a postmodern consciousness. Dear and Flusty
(1998) consider that the key features which distinguish postmodern from the modern, are the
regimes of regulation which accompany the already existing modernist regimes of
accumulation, and the economic doctrine of flexism. Regimes of regulation refer to the built
environment which supports command and control cantersof surveillance, policing measures,
planning which seeks to fragment spaces, and the efforts amongst the rich to further polarize
and segregate themselves from the poor through perpetual discourses of othering and
minoritization. By ‘Flexism,’ Dear and Flusty (1998) consider the economic mechanisms
which allow capital to be more flexible, in the way it can shift employment, or operations
depending on where the profit is highest, this has lead to deindustrialization and loss of jobs,
which is only partially mitigated by the information economy. Central to postmodern
urbanism are the narratives created to describe randomized capitalist accumulation, and the
increasing flexibility of corporations to effect their will.
Within the urban geography discipline, the Los Angeles school remains a subject of
fierce debate. Shearmur (2008) examines research approaches used by different schools,
pointing to the superiority of scientific method in establishing transparent, meticulous, and
reproducible analysis. The Chicago and Los Angeles schools can be contrasted on their basis
of analysis, while Shearmur (2008) acknowledges the Los Angeles school has its own way of
acquiring knowledge, he points to the depth and volume of research conducted by the
Chicago school and its relative utility. The advancement of a theory of ‘random’ capitalism,
simply does not follow empirical evidence. Shearmur (2008) specifically attacks the
postmodernist Los Angeles school on the basis of two contentions, first the polyvocality
approach of the postmodernist school which seeks to give all voices equal agency, and
second the ethical questions of determining which narratives are right and which are wrong.
If all things are equal, there is no point in studying further, Shearmur (2008) concludes that
this inability to have an effective epistemological basis prevents the Los Angeles school from
making real strides in scientific evidence-based research.
Curry and Kenney (2000) analyze the standpoint of the Los Angeles school in its
ability to interpret economic and social statistics and employ them effectively in a field of
study. The triumphalist tone of Dear and Flusty (1998) was particularly problematic as it
highlighted a dynamic of utopian vs. dystopian narratives and became further estranged from
scientific analysis as a result. In the early 1990s when Los Angeles faced an economic
downturn, one which Curry and Kenney (2000) detail was perpetual and long term, the Los
Angeles school has been forced to rescind some of its more lofty claims. Curry and Kenney
(2000) situate Los Angeles as such an exceptional city that it would be impossible to project
it as a universal model for all cities. The origins of the west was dependent on capital
transfers, the military instalments and defence industries which followed were much the same
enabling Los Angeles fortunes to be largely tied to the permanent arms economy as opposed
to normal economic cycles. Curry and Kenney (2000) detail the economic problems of Los
Angeles as having originated in the outsourcing of jobs and being unable to replace them
with other high wage jobs, and having the effect of numerous failed ventures to rejuvenate
growth. Los Angeles is a city being shaped more than it is shaping the global economy.
Insofar as resistance is concerned, the research into political action and organizing are
weak at best. Actual prospects of revolution are totally absent from discourses, the lack of
agency which is attributed to actors in the models presented by the Los Angeles school do fall
neatly in a utopian/dystopian dichotomy where all power resides with an implacable elite.
The practical utility of the Los Angeles school is undermined by its inability to understand
concrete conditions. Effective political action rests in the ability to appreciate agency and
cultivate class conscious to mobilize forces.

4. Conclusions
Dear and Flusty (1998) present have come up with some interesting points when they bring
the discourse on post modernism in geography but they failed in their attempt as the
arguments put forward are neither coherent nor convincing arguments; rather are some places
they are self-contradicting. The main aim was to establish the Los Angeles School of
postmodern urbanism. The purpose was to bring a new light in urban geography but it fails to
generate even little heat and leads to the creation of lot of smoke that shadows the basic
understanding of cities. This is because the whole premise is based on a dubious assumption
that our society has moved from a modern to a post modern era. One may agree with Sui (
1999) who states that "Postmodern Urbanism" may reveal the failures of postmodernism. In
its way of providing possibilities for a new radical breakthrough in geographical thinking
postmodern urbanism has rather built its own coffin as it neither provides a new vision nor a
new city but only a new style.