"Urbanization: Towards a New Conceptual Cartography"

Neil Brenner, Professor of Urban Theory, Director, Urban Theory Lab, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University - Divided City: City Seminar Talk

Can urbanization be equated with the growth of cities and their populations? In this lecture, Neil Brenner argues against that prevalent conception, which continues to dominate mainstream global urban policy discourse. Instead, he proposes a multiscalar approach to urbanization that includes city-building as well as the construction of broader territories, landscapes and socionatures that support urban life on a planetary scale. He argues, in particular, that historically inherited 'hinterlands' are today being transformed into operational landscapes for the metabolism of capitalist industrial urbanization:  they are thus integral to a thickening, if unevenly woven, planetary urban fabric. On this basis, Brenner speculates on questions of territorial (in)justice under conditions of planetary urbanization.

RSVPs appreciated to Tila Neguse, tneguse@wustl.edu