City analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action
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Spatializing the urban, Part I
Edward Soja
To cite this article: Edward Soja (2010) Spatializing the urban, Part I, City, 14:6, 629-635
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2010.539371
Published online: 16 Dec 2010.
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Edward Soja
MyTaylorCCIT_A_539371.sgm10.1080/13604813.2010.539371City:[email protected] Analysis &and Article Francis (print)/1470-3629Francis of Urban comments Trends (online) here are instigated in part by more effective critical (urban) theory and the response I received last year from my practice. presumptuous search engine after entering To achieve this rebalanced ontology will ‘spatial justice’. Do you mean social justice?’ require a period in which, almost as a form of I was asked. No, I wanted to scream back, affirmative action, the spatial will be strategi- but I knew no one would be listening. While cally and assertively foregrounded, put first keeping to the spirit established in this jour- to make up for its marginalization as mere nal of stimulating continuing debate on background container or stage under the ‘urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action’, impress of a hegemonic social historicism. I will begin by explaining why I am so insis- This will mean going beyond the timid tent on the specific term spatial justice. Fram- lament that space matters to recognize more ing my response to the eight excellent cogently the far-reaching causal and explana- commentaries on Seeking Spatial Justice tory power of the human geographies we contained in this issue is the assertion and produce and within which we live. Caution is assumption that putting ‘spatial’ first, before necessary in promoting this assertive critical justice as well as many other terms and spatial perspective to avoid simply replacing concepts, is not only useful and revealing but social and historical determinisms with will increasingly shape critical debates on purely spatial ones. Such caution, however, both urban theory and urban politics and should not prevent a determined and trans- practice. disciplinary effort to reconstitute a three- I begin with a reference to what the critical sided rather than binary ontology of being, realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar once called moving beyond Heidegger’s Zeit und Sein to ‘ontological struggle’. Reconstructing an include a resounding Raum as well. appropriate ontology for urban studies is a In many ways, thinking about the social necessary step toward better urban theory, world needs to become more like what empirical analysis, policy making and politi- thinking about the physical or natural world cal practice. More specifically, this ontologi- has always been: rooted in a three-sided cal restructuring primarily involves achieving ontology in which the material world a new balance between historical, spatial and (matter, energy) is seen as inherently spatial social perspectives after a century and a half and temporal. Privileging time over space (or of hegemonic social historicism, during the reverse) becomes patently absurd. These which the historical development of social- ontological remarks underpin my insistence ity, of individual biography and collective on maintaining if not asserting the impor- social life, took priority and epistemological tance of the spatial in understanding justice privilege over the spatiality of life. Restoring and many other fundamental social and the balance of the ontological triad or trialec- historical concepts and developments. tic, as I once called it, wherein our social Seeking Spatial Justice is not just a descriptive existence is seen as simultaneously spatial exploration of the geography of social justice and temporal, geographical and historical, but a much more comprehensive attempt to without either being intrinsically privileged spatialize the concept at all levels of over the other, is fundamental to building knowledge formation: from ontology to
ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/10/060629-07 © 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2010.539371 630 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6 epistemology, theory-building, empirical through a critical spatialization of justice as a study and social praxis. My discussion of the concept, a rethinking in which the spatiality commentaries contained in this issue of City of justice is not only a descriptive material reflects the idea that just being spatial, using dimension but also a generative, explanatory, spatial metaphors and terminology, is not and causal force in and of itself. enough. Spatializing social justice requires an The only exception to my insistence on the interpretive commitment to what might be specific term spatial justice is the synony- called the precession of the spatial in theory mous use of Henri Lefebvre’s (1968) original and practice. and assertively spatial concept of right to the city (RTTC). So convergent are the two concepts, that I considered changing the title Putting space first … and demanding more to reflect the virtual equivalence of seeking spatial justice and struggling over the right to Seeking Spatial Justice, as nearly all commen- the city. As several commentators note and I tators notice, is driven by a determined agree, activists are likely to find RTTC more advocacy of a critical spatial perspective, tangible and familiar a mobilizing metaphor something I have been doing in all my than SSJ, just as a few decades ago more academic writings. What is different about SSJ politically appealing notions of environmen- is its more specific concern for how a critical tal justice attracted activist geographers and spatial perspective has begun to spread other spatial thinkers. What I do not find beyond the academic realm and into social and acceptable, however, is an occlusive substitu- political practice, significantly influencing the tion in which the assertive spatiality and mobilization, identity, cohesion and strategic attention to urban spatial causality that is actions of urban social movements. For some inherent in Lefebvre’s conceptualization is very special reasons that are discussed in detail lost or blocked from view, as I think has been in SSJ, this process started most successfully occurring in recent discussions of the RTTC in Los Angeles but has been emerging in new that reductively refocus the debate around, and interesting ways in other major urban for example, the search for a just city or regions and activist organizations. worse, bland (neo)liberal calls for egalitarian The expanded practical and political role democracy and/or universal human rights. of spatial theory has made me more confi- Continuing to be inspired by the unfettered dent than ever before of the inherent power spatial insights of Henri Lefebvre (1996), I of spatial thinking and the attendant practical build into nearly every chapter of SSJ a vigor- and theoretical payoffs that come from ous argument that not only does space matter, putting space as an interpretive perspective but that a critical spatial perspective has the first rather than subordinating it to more power to advance our knowledge in new and social and historical modes of analysis. This innovative ways whatever subject one has reinforced my insistence on interpreting chooses to explore. Putting space first as an justice as specifically and inherently spatial explanatory perspective and/or political strat- rather than seeing it as merely the geographi- egy, I argue from the start, has the potential to cal dimension of social justice, or attaching to open up enriching and often unexpected justice such other labels as environmental or possibilities for both theoretical and practical territorial. Spatial justice, in my view, should political innovation. These payoffs arising not be reduced to just another variant of from foregrounding a critical spatial perspec- social justice or one of many attributes and tive are illustrated more vividly by what may aspects that can be ranked and compared on eventually be considered one of the most some scale of inherent importance. My intent important geographical discoveries of the past in SSJ is not to compete with these alternative century: that specifically urban spatial causal- terms but to supplement their usefulness ity or what I called synekism, the stimulus of SOJA: SPATIALIZING THE URBAN, PART I 631 urban agglomeration, may be the primary idea that recognition and further exploration cause of economic growth, technological of urban spatial causality, the enormous innovation and cultural creativity. Urbaniza- generative and explanatory power of the way tion (delivered and lived of course by human we organize urban geographies, will signifi- agency) is not the only cause of societal devel- cantly shape the development of urban opment and change, but it is being posited studies in the 21st century. today—most often I might add by non-geog- For this to happen, however, the genera- raphers—as the most important generative tive force of cities (and perhaps also the form force. and focus of debates that occur in City) must Urban spatial causality and the generative be cogently aware of the socio-spatial dialec- effects of cities have recently entered tic and wrapped in a balanced understanding economics textbooks as Jane Jacobs external- of geography and history (geohistory), and ities, honoring the author of The Economy of not descend into simplistic spatial determin- Cities (1969), where the idea was first isms. Keeping in critical balance the ontolog- systematically approached. Jacobs would ical sociality, historicality and spatiality of also argue that urbanization has been the life is necessary to achieve such immediate primary driving force behind all forms of goals in urban studies as fostering the combi- societal development over the past 12,000 native synergies of urban cultural studies and years, starting with the urban generation of urban geopolitical economy, advancing and the agricultural revolution, standing on its connecting the political agendas of many head the long accepted canons asserting agri- different ‘socio-spatial’ movements (as they culture as the necessary predecessor to urban need to be called today), and more generally development. While the wider implications creating innovative ways of transforming of these discoveries are yet to be felt and the theory into practice, knowledge into action. barriers to acceptance remain formidable, I can think of no stronger assertion of the significant societal effects of the making of Varying resistances: cautious but human geographies or what Lefebvre called supportive nods from practitioners the (social) production of (social) space. and activists Putting space first has been sustained and stimulated further through the impact of At least from the eight commentaries on SSJ what has been called the spatial turn. More contained in this issue, there is a great deal of than ever before, an awareness of at least the variation in how far my arguments about the potential importance of a critical spatial ontological, theoretical and practical signifi- perspective has spread throughout the cance of putting space first are accepted. humanities and social sciences as well as into Given the preamble, my first overall response such professional fields as Law and Theol- is to urge everyone, no matter how strong ogy. What was almost incomprehensible their spatial perspective may be, to expand twenty years ago—and this includes the the scope of their geographical imaginations. spatial writings of Lefebvre, Foucault and Whether engaged in critical theorizing or Jacobs—has now become not only more active practice, thinking spatially about familiar but, in many cases, superficially justice and participatory democracy can have fashionable, little more than using spatial significant payoffs. metaphors such as mapping, landscape, topo- Although there are exceptions, I think this or that. However one views this spatial there is a broad patterning of responses, with turn, it has expanded in unprecedented ways those more involved in practice and action the academic and popular audience for more willing to accept a strong spatial discussions about the significance of the perspective while more academic commenta- spatiality of social life. This reinforces the tors, especially geographers, feel more 632 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6 comfortable with a traditional ‘flat’ spatial ‘actually imagining change’ and convincingly perspective, in which space is seen in just its argues that practitioners do far better at this materialized form as mappable background imagining than theoreticians. She does not environment, important to be sure but with doubt, however, that her activist experience little explanatory, generative or causal power. in Los Angeles revolved around struggles for Martin Woessner, currently involved in spatial justice, although they were never the Center for Worker Education at CUNY, labeled as such. She goes on to raise vital is about as creatively and insightfully under- questions about how to build a radical and standing of my assertive spatial perspective as effective praxis and ends with a gentle I can possible ask for and I am very grateful demand that theorizing spatial justice needs to him for establishing such a clear and posi- to provide more inspiration for such building tive comparative marker. He is also the only and growing. This represents a challenge to commentator to recognize the critical impor- all critical theorists, spatially informed or not, tance of ontological rethinking and its role in to appreciate the difficulty and complexity of freeing the assertive power of a critical spatial the translation of theory into practice, what is perspective from the smothering effects of often described as praxis. persistent social historicism, rekindling my The activist Jon Liss, co-founder of the hope that these ontological issues will Right to the City Alliance along with Gilda continue to play a role in the debates Haas (former executive director of SAJE, contained in and sparked by this journal. Strategic Actions for a Just Economy in Los Reverend Andrew Davey, one of the lead- Angeles, where Andrea Gibbons worked), is ing progressive political activists in the UK, also Executive Director of Tenants and also strikes similarly supportive chords about Workers United in Alexandria, Virginia. Liss the importance of a critical spatial theory of makes a brilliantly detailed argument about justice while understandably raising the how spatial analysis and a vivid spatial important observation that spatial strategies consciousness are at the core of ‘all of the are not the monopoly of progressive forces. most advanced organizing work’. But he also European fascist and far-right parties (just as notes that no one uses the explicit term I might add the most powerful global corpo- ‘spatial justice’. As with many of the rations) use spatial strategies in remarkably commentators, there is a political and theo- sophisticated ways to reinforce spatial struc- retical preference for the right to the city idea tures of social control, cultural and racial rather than the more abstract sounding and oppression, and political economic advantage. still not widely understandable term spatial Davey hopefully points to such organizations justice. Especially with regard to the continu- as Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate ing transformation of spatial theory into as well as variations on the struggle over the spatial practice, there must be continuing right to the city as a means of reorganizing to debate on the strategic significance of mobi- change the unjust geographies encouraged lizing political metaphors and complementary and sustained by such groups as the British alternatives to spatial justice such as the right National Party and English Defence League. to the city, environmental justice, territorial My spatial assertiveness is accepted more justice and the just city. cautiously by such activist commentators as Liss applauds the work of the UCLA Andrea Gibbons and Jon Liss, but I greatly Urban Planning department but insightfully appreciate their somewhat skeptical support challenges me to critically evaluate the major and especially their very cogent insights into labor community coalitions I discuss, includ- the contrasting spatial imaginations of activ- ing the Bus Riders Union, LAANE, and the ists and theoreticians. Gibbons in ‘Bridging RTTC Alliance. Jane Wills, as a leading theory and practice’ wonders whether theo- academic activist in contemporary urban rizing spatial justice helps very much in struggles in the UK, addresses similar issues SOJA: SPATIALIZING THE URBAN, PART I 633 in her essay on ‘Academic agents for change’. raphy or a stubborn geography of injustice The achievements of the Urban Planning would be easily understood. In her reaction department at UCLA are recognized, appre- to over-spatializing, Wills for me provides a ciated and linked to ambitious developments transition from the commentaries of the in the Department of Geography at Queen activists to the more academic and theoreti- Mary–University of London. Wills also, like cal interventions. Liss, turns the critique around to focus on the new labor–community organizations themselves, both in Los Angeles (uncon- Academic reactions: moving beyond the vinced by arguments that seeking spatial spatial debates? justice was vital to coalition building) and in London, where she describes the growth of The comments of Iveson, Chatterton and the London Citizens organization as a much Cunningham sidestep some of the more asser- more traditional community-based social tive statements about the precession of the movement (with little or no attention given spatial to present three very different and to space or spatial justice thinking). informative reinterpretations of Seeking While applauding my passionate spatial Spatial Justice. Kurt Iveson in his reflections advocacy, Wills politely suggests that my from Sydney uses SSJ as a springboard for a attachment to spatial justice may have fascinating exploration of the struggles of the ‘clouded’ my analysis of the role played ‘by Battlers of Kelly’s Bush in Sydney, and political resources, relationship-building and comparisons of SSJ with the book Power in pragmatism in pursuing coalition politics’. Coalition, written by Amanda Tattersall Reacting to this reasonable critique, I want to (2010), director of the newly formed Sydney make it clear that my attachment to spatial Alliance, Australia’s version of the London justice (and to putting space first) is not Citizens organization and the labor- meant to preclude the importance of other community coalitions of Los Angeles. factors affecting the growth of new coali- The story of the Battlers, the related Green tions, but rather to suggest that all these Ban movement, and the new Sydney Alliance other influences and contingencies need to be are refreshingly examined as explicitly spatial seen as spatial too. That I do not do enough in their mobilization, objectives and strate- of this kind of analysis and organizational gies. Particularly interesting was the impor- critique in SSJ is a perfectly valid point, one tant entry of the labor movement into what that relates to Liss’s request for deeper analy- were essentially local community struggles, a sis of all the new coalitions. My concern is key feature of the Los Angeles coalitions only that coalition-building in all its aspects discussed in SSJ but very different from continues to be seen as inherently spatial or London Citizens, where union locals and spatio-temporal and not as some abstract labor-community ties are buried under social or organizational process. overly centralized national politics. I was left Wills, a geographer, displays a weaker wanting to know more about the Australian version of what is often the reaction of case, for example, whether there are any geographers to assertively putting space examples of what in Los Angeles has been first—that is, a hesitance if not actual resis- called community-based regionalism. tance to promoting too great an emphasis Iveson’s essay effectively reinforces the on spatial or geographical causality. She comments of several others about the need to speaks of the ‘stubborn cartography of engage in rigorous comparative studies of injustice’ in London, for example, rather contemporary coalition building and urban- than the more pointed spatiality or geogra- based socio-spatial movements, especially phy of injustice. Spatiality may sound too those inspired by the struggle over spatial abstract, but surely calling it an unjust geog- justice and/or the right to the city. 634 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Paul Chatterton’s commentary, ‘Seeking consciousness of oppression can act as a new the urban common’, revolves around a stimu- kind of connective tissue to bring together lating and challenging exploration of the diverse social movements in large multivalent synergies between SSJ and Hardt and Negri’s alliances and associations. For Cunningham, Commonwealth. Chatterton, like the others, however, such eclectic coalition building may is supportive and enthusiastic about SSJ and be a step too far, blunting the more radical uses the term space a lot, but I could not help edges of the right to the city idea and more feeling that too little attention was being aggressive struggles for spatial justice. These given to urban spatial causality and the impli- comments connect well with several other cations of the socio-spatial dialectic in his commentaries noting the need to critically reading of Commonwealth. Do Hardt and analyze even the most successful examples of Negri, for example, recognize that the coalition building. commons is fundamentally spatial (not just Cunningham goes on, however, to identify urban) in its causes and consequences, that it with David Harvey’s alleged position that in is assertively spatial and not just a social and the end the issue is capitalism, full stop. historical phenomenon? Do they address the Through this positioning, a certain antago- expansion of the commons concept to the nism against spatial thinking enters the national and global scale or the degree to debate and the language changes to suggest which legal obsession with private property the lingering effects of social historicism, rights needs to be directly challenged in the with mention of the privileging of ‘social reformation of the commons, as I discuss in forces’ in ‘social reality’ and what seemed to SSJ? Shouldn’t a geographer notice the need me the somewhat contradictory advocacy for for Hardt and Negri’s discourse, here and in the use of justice and universal human rights their other works, to be more explicitly and (sans their fundamental spatiality) as power- assertively spatialized? ful political rallying cries. The forceful spati- These are merely some chiding asides, for I ality of capitalism almost disappears in the learned a great deal from Chatterton’s stimu- midst of a relentless fear of radical ideas lating essay. It was additionally reassuring to being reduced to mere reformism. see someone so closely associated with the These Marxian orthodoxies lead Cunning- journal Antipode feel so comfortable actually ham to attack me for spanning too much of using the term spatial justice so many times. I the political spectrum and for ‘dubious mention this given the strong tendency for political judgments’, claiming that I do not radical geographers, especially those most blame the IMF and World Bank enough for influenced by David Harvey, to be suspi- leading the world into poverty (rather than cious of anyone emphasizing either of the merely following the logic of capital). In terms spatial and justice, both of which response, I want not only to say that I Marxists often associate with bourgeois or would never dismiss the immediate respon- diversionary tendencies. Along these lines, sibility of the IMF and so many other global however, I wonder if Chatterton has ever organizations and institutions for the ‘horri- considered changing the name of the new ble immiseration’ of the developing world, research group he helped to create at Leeds but at the same time I remain uncomfortable from ‘Cities and Social Justice’ to ‘Cities and with the tightly closed doors of capitalist Spatial Justice’ or perhaps even Socio-spatial reductionism. Capitalism is not the only Justice? issue, nor should we reduce the causes of all David Cunningham’s essay on ‘Rights, injustices purely to the demands of capitalist politics and strategy’ goes right to the heart accumulation. of my arguments in SSJ about strategic I make this argument, here and in SSJ, not optimism, the necessity for coalition build- as an apologist for capitalism or the IMF nor ing, and my claim that a shared spatial as a deluded political actor who has spread SOJA: SPATIALIZING THE URBAN, PART I 635 his inclusiveness too widely, but as a References geographer-planner committed to finding some room between reformism and revolu- Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2009) Commonwealth. tion for radical spatial praxis, as a teacher of Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. committed activists who see the need to go Jacobs, J. (1969) The Economy of Cities. New York:. beyond reducing everything to capitalism’s Random House. perpetual imprint, as a strategically optimis- Lefebvre, H. (1968) Le droit á la ville. Paris: Anthropos tic urban analyst who sees the urgent need Lefebvre, H. (1996) Writings on Cities/Henri Lefebvre. for building flexible and cross-cutting coali- Selected, trans., and introduction by Eleanore tions even when they stretch beyond Kaufman and Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. conventional class or race or gender bound- Soja, E. (1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and aries, and finally as a scholar-activist who Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford, UK and believes that Marxism is not like pregnancy Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. or death, demanding 100% allegiance. Pure Tattersall, A. (2010) Power in Coalition. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. capitalism or pure socialism are not and Warf, B. and Arias, S. eds. (2008) The Spatial Turn: should not be the only choices, nor is it Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York and intolerable to be, say, 80% Marxist and London: Routledge. committed not to socialist revolution now (or reflexive anti-Marxism) but to the cross- Edward W. Soja is Distinguished Professor of cutting goal of making capitalism as socialist Urban Planning at the UCLA School of as possible. Public Affairs, and for many years was I am sure I will pick up this issue again in Centennial Visiting Professor in the Cities the next volume of City and in response to Programme, London School of Economics. another set of commentaries on SSJ. For He is the author of Postmodern Geographies: now, I want to thank Bob Catterall for orga- The Reassertion of Space in Critical Theory, nizing this extraordinary forum and all the Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and commentators for their thoughtful and much Other Real-and-Imagined Places, and Post- appreciated contributions. I look forward to metropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and continuing the debates. Regions. Email: [email protected]