Villages and Urbanization

Abstract

In this article comments by politician Boris Johnson and economist Edward Glaeser exemplify narratives of global urbanization that portray rural villages as redundant and perpetuate outdated notions of urban–rural division. Simultaneously, traditional urban–rural dialectics are distorted by divisive new urban projects like gated communities styled as villages. This paper argues for development models that acknowledge the vital environmental and economic roles played by rural villages, and opposes artificially created “villages” in cities. In so doing, alternative readings of rurality and villages by Rem Koolhaas, Brazilian land reformers, Mahatma Gandhi, and critics of contemporary Indian literature and urbanism are considered.

Keywords:

• village
• urbanization
• agriculture
• globalization
• settlement form

Notes

1. For example, “Gandhi was Wrong, says London Mayor,” Times of India (October 5, 2011). Available online: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/other-news/Gandhi-was-wrong-says-London-mayor/articleshow/10241894.cms (accessed November 2016).

2. Gordon McGranahan and David Satterthwaite, Urbanisation Concepts and Trends (IIED Working Paper No. 2014). Available online: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/10709IIED.pdf (accessed December 1, 2016).

3. Ibid.

4. Tony Champion and Graham Hugo, eds., New Forms of Urbanization, Beyond the Urban–Rural Dichotomy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).

5. See note 1.

6. Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City (London: Pan, 2012), 5.

7. Edward L. Glaeser, “Why Has Globalization Led to Bigger Cities?,” New York Times (May 19, 2009). Available online: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/why-has-globalization-led-to-bigger-cities/?_r=0

8. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, 7.

9. UN-Habitat document for the twenty-fourth session governing council, “Time to Think Urban,” 3. Available online: http://unhabitat.org/time-to-think-urban-un-habitat-vision-on-urbanisation/ (accessed September 15, 2016).

10. Federico Caprotti, Robert Cowley, Ayona Datta, Vanesa Castán Broto, Eleanor Gao, Lucien Georgeson, Clare Herrick, Nancy Odendaal, and Simon Joss, “The New Urban Agenda: Key Opportunities and Challenges for Policy and Practice,” Urban Research & Practice (2017): 1–2. Available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2016.1275618.

11. UN-Habitat, “Time to Think Urban,” 6.

12. “Five Minutes with Chantal Mouffe,” LSE European Politics and Policy blog. Available online: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/09/16/five-minutes-with-chantal-mouffe-most-countries-in-europe-are-in-a-post-political-situation/ (accessed December 2016).

13. Erik Swyngedouw, “Post-Democratic Cities. For Whom and for What?,” paper presented at Regional Studies Association Annual Conference Pecs, Budapest, 26 May, 2010, 5. Available online: http://www.variant.org.uk/events/pubdiscus/Swyngedouw.pdf

14. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, 9, 69–92.

15. According to the UN Population Fund, http://www.unfpa.org/urbanization

16. Quotation in Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006), 175.

17. Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 82.

18. According to the MST’s own website, http://www.mstbrazil.org

19. Sonia Maria P. P. Bergamasco and Luiz Antonio Norder, “Rural Settlements and the MST in São Paolo: From Social Conflict to the Diversity of Local Impacts,” in Challenging Social Inequality: The Landless Rural Worker’s Agrarian Reform in Brazil, ed. Miguel Carter (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).

20. Brenda B. Lin, M. Jahi Chappell, John Vandermeer, Gerald Smith, Eileen Quintero, Rachel Bezner-Kerr, Daniel M. Griffith, Stuart Ketcham, Steven C. Latta, Philip McMichael, Krista L. McGuire, Ron Nigh, Dianne Rocheleau, John Soluri, and Ivette Perfecto, Effects of Industrial Agriculture on Climate Change and the Mitigation Potential of Small-Scale Agro-ecological Farms (Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources 6, No. 020). Wallingford: CAB International, 2011; cited in Max Ajl, “The Hypertrophic City Versus the Planet of Fields,” in Implosions/Explosiona: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, ed. Neil Brenner (Berlin: Jovis, 2013), 340.

21. Ibid. (but not cited in Ajl).

22. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).

23. “Rem Koolhaas in the Country,” ICON (September 2014: “Countryside” issue). Available online: http://www.iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/11,031-rem-koolhaas-in-the-country

24. For example, The Independent (October 21, 2015). Available online: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/anish-kapoor-s-orbit-losing-10,000-a-week-described-as-standout-success-for-olympic-legacy-a6702291.html

25. For example, Henri de Ruiter, Jennie I. Macdiarmid, Robin B. Matthews, Thomas Kastner, and Pete Smith, “Global Cropland and Greenhouse Gas Impacts of UK Food Supply are Increasingly Located Overseas,” Journal of the Royal Society, 13, no. 114 (2016). Available online: http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/ (accessed February 19, 2017).

26. Malcolm Miles, Urban Utopias: The Built and Social Architectures of Alternative Settlements (Oxford: Routledge, 2007), 83.

27. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects (New York: Doubleday, 1964); Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog (New York: Random House, 1968); E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (Preston: Abacus Press, 1973).

28. Edward Goldsmith, A Blueprint for Survival (London: Penguin, 1973); Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, and Shlomo Angel, A Pattern Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 71.

29. Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, and Shlomo Angel, A Pattern Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 41–85.

30. Leonie Sandercock, “A Portrait of Post-Modern Planning: Anti-Hero and/or Passionate Pilgrim?,” Plan Canada 39, no. 2 (1999): 12–15, as cited in Jill L. Grant, “Two Sides of a Coin? New Urbanism and Gated Communities,” Housing Policy Debate 18, no. 3 (2007): 483.

31. Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson, The Social Logic of Space (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 132.

32. Alberto Magnaghi, The Urban Village (London: Zed, 2005).

33. Among them are Hobsbawm, Jameson, Delanty, Rose, Bauman and Giddens.

34. Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [1881] (Norderstedt: Grin, 2014).

35. Sam Hillyard, The Sociology of Rural Life (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 14.

36. Gerard Delanty, Community (Oxford: Routledge, 2003), 188.

37. Nirmalya Bhushan Das Gupta, Nehru and Planning in India (New Delhi: Concept, 1989).

38. As quoted in Surinder S. Jodkha, “Nation and Village Images of Rural India in Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar,” Economic and Political Weekly (August 10, 2002).

39. Ishita Aditya Ray and Sarbapriya Ray, “B. R. Ambedkar and his Philosophy of Land Reform: An Evaluation,” Afro Asian Journal of Social Sciences 2, no. 2.1. Available online: http://www.onlineresearchjournals.com/aajoss/previousissues.php?jn=19

40. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, 2006. Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

41. Lloyd L. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 155.

42. Anupama Mohan, Utopia and the Village in South Asian Literatures (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 185.

43. For example, Times of India (Delhi) (February 1, 2017). Available online: http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31808&articlexml=40-Dalit-families-flee-Mirchpur-after-caste-clash-01022017009020

44. Amitabh Kundu interviewed in Civil Society. Available online: http://civilsociety.defindia.org/migration-to-cities-has-been-slowing-down/

45. William J. Glover, “The Troubled Passage from ‘Village Communities’ to Planned New Town Developments in Mid Twentieth Century South Asia,” in Ecologies of Urbanism in India, ed. Anne Rademacher and Sivaramakrishnan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 111.