‘A Challenging Task’: Political Economy in/of the Urban Age

Abstract

The arrival of an ‘urban age’ is trumpeted by global institutions and, increasingly, by popular and expert commentary. The heralds announce an era of new human possibility, of vast creative and economic potential liberated by urbanization. The banners of ‘revolution’ (Brugmann) and ‘triumph’ (Glaeser) have been unfurled by the leading exponents of new urban enthusiasm. And yet this dawn chorus neglects the darkening clouds of reaction and threat that gather on the new urban horizon. The gloom of recrudescence contrasts with the bright motif of revolution. In knowledge and ‘expertise’, graves thought closed are reopening: positivism and its kindred ideologies (scientism, naturalism, and empiricism) are reawakening especially in new assessments of the urban condition. In politics, neo-liberalism, which Harvey explains as a class project not intellectual schema, seems to have survived repeated censure and contradiction. ‘Neo-liberal urbanism’ (Hodson and Marvin) remains steadfast. In environmentalism, critique and progression seem stalled by an impressively adaptive capitalist political economy that continues to overcome natural barriers to realization (e.g. peak oil). It is a paradox perhaps that capitalism, the most potent historical force for change, depends heavily on recrudescence for political and ideological continuity: the revival and reinstatement of philosophies and frames that bury or obscure its underlying political economy. Whilst political economic interrogation of the sort advanced by Stilwell now seems a diminished force, its cause and rationale have surely never been stronger. In an urban age marked by profound human endangerment, the case for renewal of political economic scholarship is compelling. This chapter makes this case and sketches out some markers and imperatives for political economic enquiry in an urban ‘World at Risk’ (Beck).