MICRO-ESSAY BY REUBEN DIAMOND
“ A new conceptual lexicon must be created for identifying the wide variety of urbanisation processes that are currently reshaping the urban world” (“Planetary Urbanization,” Brenner, N., & Schmid, C., p. 13)
BOUNDARIES DISSOLVED
As planetary urbanization reconfigures social, economic, and spatial relations, the traditional frameworks of urban studies encounter profound limitations. Historically, urban studies have conceptualized cities as discrete entities with defined boundaries, distinct from the “non-urban” zones beyond. This binary model, grounded in a 19th and early 20th-century worldview, now falters in the face of vast, interconnected “URBAN GALAXIES” that dissolve such boundaries and reconfigure space on a planetary scale. These emergent formations, sprawling from mega-regions to infrastructural networks that interlink oceans, rural zones, and even once-remote hinterlands, demand an epistemological overhaul.
URBANISATION AS A PROCESS
Brenner and Schmid argue for an ontological shift: urbanization must be understood as a dynamic process of socio-spatial organization, one that renders obsolete the study of static urban forms or “types.” This shift challenges urban studies not only to transcend its reliance on rigid classifications but to engage with methodological pluralism, embracing new tools capable of mapping urbanization as a totalizing global phenomenon. Urbanization, once rooted in the confines of cities, now implicates everything from global commodity chains to ecological networks, each embedded in complex, interdependent systems of human and non-human life.
LEXICON OF THE FUTURE
Ultimately, PLANETARY URBANISATION compels a new lexicon, one capable of capturing the relational, fluid nature of today’s urban processes. By reconceptualizing the “urban” as ubiquitous and boundless, urban studies can forge intellectual pathways that reflect the expansive realities of 21st-century urbanization, offering insights into the spatial logics shaping our collective futures.
KEYWORDS:
PLANETARY URBANISATION: The global spread of urbanization, dissolving boundaries between urban and non-urban spaces.
URBAN-RURAL CONTINUUM: A fluid spectrum linking urban and rural spaces, emphasizing their interdependence
URBAN GALAXIES: Vast, interconnected metropolitan networks that transcend individual cities and national borders.
CITATION: Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2011). Planetary urbanization. In M. Gandy (Ed.), Urban Constellations (pp. 10–13). Berlin: Jovis.
