Cities of Power

Nation-States & Their Capitals

Göran Therborn
University of Cambridge
 The Argument & The Project
• The Argument
– All cities, as built environments, can be seen as manifestations of power
• Most major cities & all capital cities are also representations of power
– Nation-states are the epitome of modern power
– Nation-states emerged along 4 major pathways with enduting effects, incl. on
their capitals
– National capitals then evolved in 3 different modes
• As part of a national development trajectory
• As subject to national-popular power shifts, through popular & anti-popular moments
• As subject to national-global power shifts through global moments
• The Project
– A global study of national capitals, from revolutionary Paris until today
– Combining political analysis with urban study, architecture, & iconography
• Theoretically organized & exemplified
 Urban Manifestations &
Representations of Power
• Manifestations
– Structuring social relations
– Shaping social meanings
– Functional capacity
• Representations
– Of claims to respect
• Admiration, Awe, Identity, Fear
– Of legitimacy
– Of direction (intention of development)
 Resources & Mechanisms of Urban
Power
• Land ownership & appropriation of land rent
• Planning competence & tools
• Financial resources, of national government,
city government, private capital
• Housing system, of permits, finance, rent,
access rules
• Symbolic power (of monumentality &
toponymy) , & its location: nation, city, urban
district, citizenry
 Reading the Power Text of Cities
Key variables
• Spatial layout
• Architecture
• Monumentality
– Incl. musea, pantheons, allocation of place meanings,
recurrent commemorative events
• Toponymy: naming of streets, squares, buildings
• Functionality
– Extension and distribution of urban services:
• water, sewage, housing, electricity, waste disposal, transport
etc.
 Spatial Layout
• What & Who are connected or separated, are in
the centre & in the periphery?
• What is on display, visible, or invisible?
• The hierarchy & clustering of different kinds of
buildings
• The street system (& the pattern of other
pathways) & its relation to neighbourhoods
• The social patterning of dwellings
– incidence of segregation, gated neighbourhoods,
countercultural squatting, & of informal settlements
 Architecture
• Style: Historically path-dependent meaning
• Grammar of Power building
– Size
– Height
– Weight
– Closure
– Distance
– Symmetry
Architecture: Grammar of Power
3 German Chancellor’s Buildings
 Main Pathways to a Nation-State
• 1. By internal revolution or negotiations, usually
externally triggered/contextualized: Europe
• 2. By secession from the Motherland: Settler states of
Americas, Australia & South Africa
– New settler capitals: secessions from British empire
– Old imperial capitals nationalized: Latin Ameica
• 3. By modern emancipation from colonial power : most
of Africa, large parts of Asia
• 4. By Reactive Modernization under imperialist threat:
Japan, Siam, Persia, Ottoman empire/Turkey,
• 2 Major Hybrids: Russia & China
 The European Nation-States & Their
Capitals
• Historical Proto-Nations formed before nation-states, with old princely
capitals
– National capitals mostly easy continuity with pre-national
– East-Central Strip from Helsinki to Bucarest: new national city
majorities before nation-state
• Key conflict: nation/people vs Prince
– Class relations usually overtowering ethnic
– Established religions usually on losing side & religious authority
weakened, some national capitals partly anti-clerical: Lisbon, Madrid,
Rome.

• An overseas (incl. pre-national imperialist legacy reproduced & expanded

in most Western European national capitals
 Issues of National Representation
• General
– Relation to pre-national state: ruptural vs negotiated-gradual
– Institutional or event focus
• Specific
– 1. The nation & the princes; national or national-imperial
– 2. Settler-nation, motherland, natives, (ex-)slaves
– 3.Nations by colonial amalgamation & division, colonial
modernity, pre-colonial pre-modernity
– 4. Relations of imported modernity & defended pre-modernity
– 5. The hybrids: Relating nation, historical empire, class &
socialist internationalism
 Brazza in Brazzaville & Abdel Kader in Algiers:
The Colonial Governor & the Anti-Colonial Resister
 Paris & London
• Paris : rupture
• National focus: les places
de ruptures, Bastille,
République, Nation
• Imperial victories: l’Arc de
Triomphe, boulevards de
bataille
• Capital held at bay:
– La Défense extra muros,
powerful opposition to Tour
de Triangle
• London: gradual
• National focus: institution
of Parliament
• Imperial victories:
Trafalgar Sq, Waterloo
Bridge. No major internal
event commemorated
• Capital triumphant:
Canary Wharf, the Shard
et al.
Ruptural Event & Gradual Institution
Focus
 City Trajectories
1. Popular Moments
• Popular moments: popular classes, ethnicities, & other
groups break out of the national framework of national
elites
– Workingclass municipal socialism, USA & W Europe:
Milwaukee; Amsterdam, Vienna et al.
– Welfare states: Stockholm suburbia after 1945, e.g.
– Civic rebellions, 1960s-1970s:
• Motorway resistanace (crucial victory NY 1958;Washington,
London;)
• Persistent squatting (A’dam, Berlin, Copenhagen)

– Radical metropolitan reformism: Mexico, Bogota, Jakarta,

Delhi,
 2. Communism in Urban History
4 Dimensions & 1 Constraint of Power
• 1. National (interpretation of)
– Predominant, except Moscow under Lenin
• National history, heritage, geopolitics
• 2. Socialist
– Public property of land & city planning, housing allocations, but sometimes private
property
– Scarcity of urban sociability, delimited shopping
• 3. Workingclass
– Concern with city class composition, priority housing, workers’ cultural institutions
• 4.Party
– Spaces of popular mobilization: ”magistrales”, big squares
– Political monoculture
– Leadership cult monumentality, mainly Soviet Bloc & N Korea
– No specific party architecture & party space
• Party HQs usually central, but never in urban focus
Underdog competitor in the North Atlantic area
Relativ e scarcity of housing & delimited consumption
Old Town Warsaw re-built
 3. Global Moments
• 1. Globalized Nationalism
– Diffusion & adoption of global models for asserting
national modernity, esp. urban models, often Paris
• Infrastructure (London), planning, architecture
• 2. Capitalist Globalism
– Cities driven by self-identity as locations on a global
market, for investment, trade, talent, tourism
• Indicators include: space allotted to corporate highrise buildings –
mutation of International Style after WWII;
• national monumentality overshadowed by global iconicity
• Crucial victory: London Docklands, early 1980s
• As nation-states still significant, capitals are not global cities but
may be globalized national cities
 The Global Moment
London: Quatari-owned ”Shard” above St Paul’s
 The Future of Capital Cities
• Depends mainly on that of nation-states
– Increasing number & still unfulfilled demand
– Recent financial crisis: states as lenders & regulators of last
resort
• But also on the city system of nation-states
– Very few capitals overtaken by another national city, e.g., Quito
by Guayaquil
– More capitals have recently increased their advantage over
second cities, e.g., Moscow, Prague, Tokyo
– Several constructed political capitals have grown into
metropolitan agglomerations, e.g., Ankara, Brasilia, New Delhi,
Washington
• Conclusion: Important future