Marcel Mirzaei-Fard
Words without bibliography: 1200 words
Student Number: 2519870
15/1-2013
Blackwell City Reader Part I. Materialities
Urban materiality: A highly uneven affair?
“Urban change tends to be spatially differentiated and highly uneven“ (Swyngedouw & Heynen 2010:83).
How is that possible? In this essay, I will discuss five different scholars who all share the view,
that the urban materiality condition is a product of macro economic, social and/or cultural
processes. Especially, I will focus on the perspectives for the working class and marginalized
groups; that is, how can we see these macro processes manifest and show in the built
environment of the cities? To do so, I look first at the philosophical discussion of “nature vs.
urbanity” by Swyngedouw and Heynen. This discussion will, secondly, lead to my basis for the
discussion of four different perspectives of the material and spatial conditions for the working
class or/and marginalized groups in different cities at different time and different place.
Nature and urbanity
The foundation of Swyngedouw & Heyen’s analysis is that cities, like all other environments, are
products of sociality and politics. Urbanization is not merely a process of - roughly said - turning
nature environment into city environment, but instead a result and symbol of macro processes political, social and economic (Swyngedouw & Heyen 2010:82). Only a perspective that
“transcend[s] this binary logic” is adequate to capture the conditions of materiality in environments
like cities (Ibid:81). To grasp upon such a perspective on urbanity, one must keep in mind the
classic divisions of class, gender and ethnicity (Ibid:83). In the following texts by Harvey and
Engels, these divisions are said to be created as results of the capitalistic economic system.
Screwed material conditions
As both Patel and Engels will show us below, the process of urbanization has certainly schewed
consequences and outcomes for different social groups, and this also shows spatially: “it is likely
that urban areas populated by marginalized residents will bear the brunt of negative environmental change, whereas
other, more affluent parts of cities will enjoy growth” (Swyngedouw & Heyen 2010:83).
Engels (2010) was very interested in the negative outcomes that followed urbanization in the
1800’s. In Manchester, where his observations took place, the built environment of the city
clearly marked the class boundaries and became a symbol on the poorer life conditions of the
working class who were: “sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved from the middleclass”
(Engels 2010:11). The working class districts were placed along the highroad, so that it was
hidden to the bourgeois (Ibid.11f). This physical segregation of residence makes it clear, that
buildings and built environment manifests social boundaries. But most important, the working
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Marcel Mirzaei-Fard
Words without bibliography: 1200 words
Student Number: 2519870
15/1-2013
class’ accommodation conditions are a result of the capitalistic drive for surplus by the
landowners (Bridge & Watson 2010:8).
Harvey (2010), another Marxists account, also discusses the issue of housing and accommodation
for the working class in relation to class struggle and capitalism (Harvey 2010:36f). According to
him, the agglomeration of production in cities during industrialization entailed a demand for
accommodation for the working class (Ibid.) As a response to that, two “strategies” in order to
provide accommodation were applied by the bourgeois: One was suburbanization; that is
dispersal to rural areas outside the cities, supported by cheap transportation systems. Another
was an attempt to create an urban community, so-called “gilding the ghetto”, which entailed that the
working class were “steadily concentrated in large urban areas” (Harvey 2010:37).
In the paradigm of globalization
The sharp division between classes symbolized in the built environment of cities is also the topic
Patel’s analysis of Mumbai (Patel 2010). Indeed Mumbai has undergone a massive economic
transformation into the its contemporary status of a megacity (Bridge & Watson 2010:9), but it is
increasingly becoming well-known, that not everyone has benefitted from growth (Patel
2010:72). The transformation has led with it an intensified polarization between “rich” and
“poor”, having more than 50% of its inhabitants living in slum, as a result of a highly schewed
distribution of land (space) and housing (Ibid:77). The condition of slums includes lack of
sanitation and ventilation, which resembles Engels depiction from Manchester, and like Engels
and Harvey, Patel makes us aware that this transformation and its material consequences, is a
product of history and macro processes – amongst others, globalization.
This is also a point of interest for Castells, who discusses the process he calls “space of flows” that
follows the so-called Information Age (Castells 2010). He uses the expression of Information
Age to emphasize that information and knowledge are the all-encompassing resources of
contemporary life (Castells 2010:40f). Concurring with all the Harvey, Patel and Engels, Castells
is aware of the dangers and negative outcomes that emerges in the wake of this process, stating
that we have seen: “powerful trends towards increasing inequality, social polarization and social exclusion”
(Castells 2010:43). These negative trends also show their faces in urban areas, where the unequal
distributed fortunes at one hand shows growth and development, but on the other hand decline
and pitable fates (Castells 2010:46). A reason to this has been a decline and weakening of
“institutions and organization that represented/protected workers”, which has left the working class
outside the “party” of globalization and growth (Castells 2010:43). Not everyone might, it seems,
posses the reflexive resources of the information age.
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Marcel Mirzaei-Fard
Words without bibliography: 1200 words
Student Number: 2519870
15/1-2013
Discussion & concluding remarks: Urban materiality and capitalism
In this essay, I aimed at analyzing the materiality condition of cities as a product of macro
economic, social and cultural processes, especially focusing on the conditions for the working
class and marginalized groups. All scholars share the view that capitalism can be seen as (at least
partly) foundations for the spatial and material conditions for the working class. But the way that
foundation is understood is slightly differing.
The theme of the essay is inspired by the discussion of Swyngedouw & Heynen, who by using a
urban political ecology perspective, makes us aware that urbanity “constitutes the pivotal embodiment of
capitalist […] relations” (Swyngedouw & Heynen 2010:82). Engels conducts an early depiction of
the material consequences of these relations, by showing the poor housing conditions for the
working class in 1800’s early-industrialized Manchester. Harvey is more explicit on the
mechanisms behind these living conditions as he portrays the landowners used specific strategies
to “handle” the working class. What these to texts share, is the view that history and political,
social and cultural processes has led to the material conditions of urbanity. Patel who depicts the
spatial consequences of the highly globalized Mumbai, where a very large amount of inhabitants
lives in very little space in slums, shares that view. Lastly, Castells discusses how the information
age have not solved the issues of inequality, which also shows in a “territorial exclusion” of certain
groups. Altogether, then, there seems to be evidence for Swyngedouw & Heynen’s claim that
history and political processes shapes the material conditions. However, the kind of history and
political process is slightly different, and especially Castells are open to the possibility, that we
might see a new drive: “the information age does not have to be the age of stepped-up inequality, polarization
and social exclusion. But for the moment is” (Castells 2010:43), whereas especially Harvey is not very
optimistic about this potential, as the capitalistic system will continue to function in unequal way.
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Marcel Mirzaei-Fard
Words without bibliography: 1200 words
Student Number: 2519870
15/1-2013
Bibliography:
Amin, Ash. 2010. The Economic Base of Contemporary Cities. In: The Blackwell City Reader, pp. 6071. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Bridge, G. & Watson, S. 2010. Introducing Materiality’s. In: The Blackwell City Reader, pp. 5-10.
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Castells, M. 2010. An introduction to the Information Age. In: The Blackwell City Reader, pp. 40-48.
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Engels, F. 2010. The Great Towns. In: The Blackwell City Reader, pp. 11-16. Blackwell Publishing
Ltd.
Harvey, D. 2010. The Urban Process Under Capitalism: A framework for Analysis. In: The Blackwell
City Reader, pp. 32-39-133. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Patel, Sonata. 2010. The Making of a Global City Regions: Mumbai: The Mega-City of a Poor Country. In:
The Blackwell City Reader, pp. 72-79. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Scott, A. J. 2010. Metropolis: From the Division of Labor to Urban Form. In: The Blackwell City
Reader, pp. 49-59. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Swyngedouw, Erik & Heynen, N.C. 2010: Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale. In:
The Blackwell City Reader, pp. 79-85. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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