Is it all coming together? Thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis:

Abstract

What remains a constant in this series is the crisis of the model of development and urbanisation which ‘the West’ exported to the Rest and in which it now, though reluctant to face the fact, finds itself entrapped, still haunted and incapacitated by spectres, able to assume, invoke but not deliver civilisation and ‘the city’.

This deliberately eccentric series, excentric to the established pieties of the social sciences, returns to some of the notions and narratives previously explored in the light of aspects of three recent (and equally excentric) publications, moving on from the first of these, Revolt and Crisis in Greece (edited by Antonis Vradis and Dimitris Dalakoglou), to the second, Magical Marxism (Andy Merrifield,) leaving the third, Payback (Margaret Atwood), for the last of the series. There is a continuing focus on the Greek insurrection which is now extended – drawing on a distinction between revolutionary and radical spaces and times – to aspects of the OccupyWallStreet movement.

The project seeks to bring together a range of disciplines on a transdisciplinary rather than an interdisciplinary basis. This continues to involve a series of experiments in ‘critical epic’, moving across spaces and times and their attempted appropriations, seeking to resurrect and redirect the much abused notion – much abused by mainstream urban studies, by positivism and by mechanistic forms of materialism, – of a science of society in the making, one that ‘brings people (back) in’ and seeks to go beyond, without losing, the magic of the enthusiasm for radical change and sense of evident blockages (‘entrapments’) experienced in the here and now. It is thus particularly attentive to cultural as well as economic dimensions of ‘the crisis’, with an emphasis on the political dimension that is pre-rather than post-political.

Notes

I return here to some of the wide-ranging discussion and characterisation of times and spaces, actual and potential, in Catterall, B. (2004), the second essay, ‘What time is this space?’ (City 8.2, pp. 307–335), of the series. The particular reference here is to p. 324. The importance of autonomism, particularly the work of Negri and Hardt and of Nick Dyer-Witheford was also indicated, pp. 311–314. Work that continues to be taken up (notably in this issue in Russell, Pusey and Chatterton, ‘What can an assemblage do? Seven propositions for a more strategic and politicized assemblage thinking’).

Foucault's theoretical interests did reach beyond Paris to Iran and, a fact he seems not to have acknowledged, to the Black Panthers – see Heiner, B.T. (2007) ‘Foucault and the Black Panthers’ City 11.3, pp. 313–356.

Revolt and Crisis in Greece (edited by Antonis Vradis and Dimitris Dalakoglou), Oakland and Edinburgh: Occupied London/AK Press, 2011; Magical Marxism (Andy Merrifield) London: Pluto Press, 2011.

Gourgouris, S. ‘Indignant politics in Athens – democracy out of rage’, Greek Left Review, 17 July 2011.

Gourgouris was writing in July 2011. Colleague Lila Leontidou, email 21 October, sees Athens as ‘in ruins’.

For a balanced view of costs and rewards, see Theriault, R., The Unmaking of the American Working Class, New York: The New Press, 2003 (discussed in Catterall, B. (2011) ‘Is it all coming together?’…City 15.1, p.127).

This notion and its context is also discussed in Catterall, B. (2007) ‘Is it all coming together?’ (11) From Neoliberalism towards a Paradigm for a New International', City 11.2.

This discussion of aspects of Working Capital and The Great Transformation is based on passages in Catterall, B. (2006) ‘Is it all coming together? … The play's the thing’, 10.3, pp. 393–407. This discussion of Working Capital; Life and Labour in Contemporary London, taken as a distinguished example of mainstream urban studies, was part of a comprehensive examination of Working Capital and its significance in a major feature on ‘How should we write about London?’ (City, 10.2, pp. 183–214) based on seminars devised and organised by City. This consisted of Ian Gordon's fine insider's account, ‘How should we write about London? The Working Capital view’, followed by a seminal critique by Michael Edwards, ‘Hamlet without the Prince: Whatever happened to CAPITAL in Working Capital’, and a new and supplementary approach to mainstream writing by Sukhdev Sandhu, ‘Aborigines and Unfortunates: Life and Labour across Nocturnal London’. This was followed up in 10.3 as noted above. (Further attention to Sandhu' s input was given in ‘Is it all coming together? Thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis: (14) Another city is possible? Reports from the frontline’ in City 12.3) In the somewhat exclusive and self-protective world of London-based urban studies, this critical work, despite an invitation to reply, seems subsequently to have fallen on deaf ears.

Elvin Wyly comments (email 19 October, 2011) ‘The day of the images (‘We're not commodities’ and ‘Unfuck the world’, pp. 500–501 and on the cover) was nice, friendly, peaceful, but very active, very insistent, bold, and creative. The local press estimates were a total of 4000 people at the central public space at the Vancouver Art Gallery at the peak…

Only a few days after these photographs were taken, the latest issue of Vancouver Magazine hit the stands, with a cover story documenting the struggles of young professionals in their late twenties and early thirties who leave Vancouver because the jobs don't pay enough to afford the escalating costs of entry-level homeownership. These young aspirants to a disappearing middle class are “part of what, real-estate-wise, might be called Vancouver's Generation Fucked. As the city becomes a global ‘lifestyle destination,’ tens of thousands of middle-class households are getting a hard lesson in diminished expectations” (Bridge, Tyee, 2011, “Gone”, Vancouver Magazine, November 2011, p. 68; 2011, p. 70).

After more than a decade of local press cheerleading for the latest “most livable” city rankings and double-digit increases in housing prices, it is notable that the first significant second thoughts among the growth-machine elite are announced with the f-word. And if young professionals working to get into the middle class are fucked, then exactly what kind of violation is being committed upon the proletariat?

Peter Marcuse is eloquent and powerful: “…all research, given the way the world is today, must be critical, or it is dishonest…” (City, 14 (1-2), p. 187). We must be critical, and indeed we must “unfuck the world”. (See Wyly' short piece earlier in this issue and the accompanying photograph. Ed.)

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Bob Catterall

Bob Catterall is the Editor-in-Chief of CITY.