Lecture 7: Splintering Urbanism and the Post-Fordist City Flashcards
2 trends have characterised urban society in the ‘Post-Fordist’ era
- Regime of Flexible Accumulation
- ‘Splintering Urbanism’
- Graham and Marvin, 2001
- Regime of Flexible Accumulation
‘Self-illusory hedonism’ (Campbell, 1987)
Identities and lifestyles were created through consumption
More and more counter cultures (a way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm)
Knox and Pinch, 2010: 55
People found themselves increasingly free to construct their identities and lifestyles through their patterns of consumption
Implications on our landscape
- The fragmentation and diversity of post-modern culture is argued to be manifest in the physical structure of the landscape.
- Jackson and Thrift (1995, p. 227) note, ‘identities are affirmed and contested through specific acts of consumption’.
‘Cathedrals of consumption’ (Ritzer 2005)
Example…
Istanbul
- one of the largest shopping centres in the world
- several IMAX theatres
- rollercoasters
- wave machine
- Splintering Urbanism: Geographies of Polarisation
Polarisation can refer to the proportions in the occupational structure.
– Expansion of both low-paying and high- paying service sector jobs, is leading towards the decline of middle-incomes.
- Splintering Urbanism: Geographies of Polarisation
2. Also, about how the rich may be getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
– E.g. not clear if the poor are doing somewhat better than in the past in relative terms.
(Knox and Pinch, 2010: 74)
Measuring Inequality
• There is no single metric to capture all the intricacies of economic (income or wealth) inequality
• Gini index: 0 and 1 (or 100%) 0 = complete equality
1 = complete inequality
Definitions of Inequity
- The moral and normative dimensions of inequality gives us a sense of what ought to be fair or unfair, which relates to inequity
- Inequities are avoidable inequalities. (WHO definition)
- Inequity refers to distributions that are unjust, and frequently overlaps with inequality
Changes in the production sphere have tended to increase the need for state intervention.
- Increasingly elaborate infrastructures needed: Cities must compete to be a sticking point where capital wants to be. (Capital is footloose)
- The deepening of technical skills in some occupations requires better education and training. Irony: state paying less (47% Universities income is from state)
- By and large, the state has been withdrawing from directly providing these supporting roles.
As a result of changing global and national trends, major cities can lose their sense of purpose and identity.
Lovatt and O’Connor (1995: 127)
‘Ugly grim cities they may have been but formerly they produced, they made for the world. Now they are just ugly and grim.’
The regime of flexible accumulation is argued (by some) to have manifested most clearly in
Los Angeles, California.
– It has become known as the prototypical ‘post-modern’ example of contemporary urbanization.
The Los Angeles School (or ‘California School’) is a critique of the work of the
Chicago School which dominated urban geography throughout much of the twentieth century.
Los Angeles School was created by?
Michael Dear and Edward Soja
L.A.shapedby
‘an intense localizationand fragmentation of social process’ (Dear, 2000)
• ReducedsignificanceofaCBDandthepresenceof many competing decentralized centres in their multiple nuclei model.
• The city also consists of numerous sub-centres and edge cities, each with distinctive characters.
