5 Postmodern Urbanism

Dr. Taruna Bansal

Introduction

1. Meaning of Post – Modernism in Geography

The doctrine of post-modernity had a significant influence on human geography; thus expected consequences were likely to be there. Geography a discipline which focuses on the spatial distribution of phenomena or spatial expressions and their representation on the globe, also found itself in opposition to the grand narratives of the very principles upon which the whole edifice of modern episteme and thinking is erected. The core foundations of the modernism were radically questioned and Human Geography, with focus on ‘space’ was not to be left out and therefore, geography in general also bracketed under ‘antifoundationalism’ an insignia of postmodern era.

Post 1980s, saw distinguished and substantial changes in the subject. These changes were both due to responses to internal development within the subject as well as due to the challenge thrown to it from the outside of the ambit of the subject.

Last decades of the twentieth century saw a growing opposition to the Geographers associated with the positivists and spatial analysis and interpretation of the subject. However, precisely, around the same time disenchantment among the progressive geographers with radical Marxist theorists, who still had strong belief in the grand explanations and scientific analysis, rooted in modernist tradition. These Marxist / radical critical theorists did give least importance to ‘subjectivity’, these geographers while furthering the concept of social class and social class struggle tried to universalize it, completely ignoring the context and spatial dimensions/ individual identities.

Post modern period or epoch is characterized by new cultural logic and radical reconfiguration of the concept of space. Post modernity, therefore as C. Minca in his Postmodernism/ post modern Geography reiterates ‘is not seen as singular manifestation, awaiting discovery and description by geographers: it was envisioned, rather, as a complex of diverse perspective, processes, and objects, a confused and convoluted collage of people and objects undecipherable with the analytical tools of the past’ (1989:45). A postmodern geography would involve: a resistance to paradigmatic closure and rigidly categorical thinking; the capacity to combine creatively what in the past was considered to be antithetical/uncombinable; the rejection of totalizing “deep logics” that blinker our way of seeing; the search for new ways to interpret the empirical world and tear away its layers of ideological mystification.

The early years of post modern geography were punctuated with fresh focus on new sets of research questions; one such emerging field was in the field of urban architecture or design, later came to be known as post modern city. Ideally represented through the manifestation of new urban landscape and distinct urban mosaic, the post modern city of Los Angeles of western United States of America, became the new foci of research in urbanization and urbanism. The curious phenomenon is no longer be seen through the perspective of singular logic encompassing one exclusive definition of the city style; instead ‘Post modern urbanism’ conceived city as a complex set of socio- spatial identity represented through architectural designs in complete departure from the established norms, standards and engineering technologies representing the modern and post structural age.

Along with interest in the city (and its transformations), geographers trained their focus of research on the broader changes occurring in the new age society and hypothesized the advent of post modern era. Thus one can say that post modernism is not an overnight revolution or a day’s affair. It is something which has been banging on our doors from last three decades; we must get used to it.

In human geography per se over time it has become integral and indispensible part of the geographical literature. The most significant influence of this has been on urban geography; it dates back to 1980s when in 1983, the Journal ‘Environment and Planning D. Society and Space, published write ups on post modern urbanism. Examples can be cited of writings of eminent post-modernists like Dear’s ‘Post modern Urban planning’ and Soja’s ‘Los Angeles’ Post modern’ Spatialities’, which laid a base in post modern intellectual discourse within geography. For him “modernization” is “a continuous process of restructuring of the society that is influenced by the historical and geographical dynamics of modes of production. These produce a society that has been recomposed both in time and space and is visible in concrete forms’’ (1989). According to him the traces of postmodernity can be located in the late 1960s; along with the geographical restructuring that took three different paths of spatialization: posthistoricism, reassertion of space in the ontological struggle; postfordism, an increasingly flexible, disorganized regime of capitalist accumulation; and postmodernism, companying cultural and ideological reconfiguration changing how we experience social being. All of these are simultaneously needed to solve the geographical puzzle. He views the intelligent world and its life “as a multilayered system of created nodal regions, a configuration of differentiated and hierarchically organized locales” Such a life-world includes various scales initiating from the human body, through the urban and the nation-state, to the whole social world and everywhere it is soaked with Foucault’s power and authority.

Some of the writings that established post modernism as a tradition of enquiry in geography include: Harvey’s ‘Post modernism and the American city’, David Ley’s ‘Post modern urbanism in Vancouver’, Dear’s ‘Post modern Challenge: restructuring of human Geography’ and Gregory’s ‘Areal differentiation and Post modern Geography’. It can be said that as a discipline geography was washed by the post modern wave. This can be rightly authenticated by the number of works published with this consciousness. Three themes can be identified:

a) Urban Cultural landscape and place-making – Anderson a. Gale 1992, Beauregard 1989, Dear 1989, Duncan 1990, Glennie a. Thrift 1992, Hopkins 1990, Robins 1991, Shields 1989, Short 1989, Zukin 1991, and the essays in Barnes a. Duncan 1992, Sorkin 1992, and Wolch a. Dear 1989.

b) Economic Landscape of post- Fordism (an era of flexible specialization that emphasizes on global-local connections and spatial division of labour) – Barnes a. Curry 1992, Dunford 1990, Gertler 1988, Leborgne a. Lipietz 1988, Sayer a. Walker 1992, Schoenberger 1988, Scott 1988, Slater 1992a 1992b, STORPERa. Walker 1989, Webber 1991

c) Philosophical and Theoretical Discourse (this in with reference to space and linguistic disputes) – Curry 1992, Doel 1992, Folch-Serra 1989, Hannah a. Strohmayer 1991, Harris 1991, Jones et al. 1993, Milroy 1989, Peet a. Thrift 1988, Philo 1992, Pile 1990, Schatzki 1991, Scott a. Simpson-Housley 1989, Smith 1989.

Apart from these themes, four other topical areas can be identified where the post modern consciousness was manifested. These are –

d) Problems of representation in geographical/ethnographic writing – Barnes a. Duncan 1992, Crang 1992, Jackson 1991, Marcus 1992, Matless 1992 a, Katz 1992, Keith 1992, Reichert 1992), in cartography (Harley 1989, Pickles 1992, Wood 1992), and in art (Bonnett 1992, Daniels 1992);

e) The politics of postmodernism both historical and contemporary – Dalby 1991, Driver 1992, Graham 1992, Hepple 1992, O’Tuathail 1992, Pile a. Rose 1992), feminist geography’s discontentment with postmodernism (Bondi a. Domosh 1992, Christopherson 1989, Domosh 1991, Pratt 1992), orientalism and postcolonialism (Driver 1992, Gregory 1991), and the law and critical legal studies

f) An emphasis on the construction of the individual and the boundaries of self including human psychology and sexuality respectively – Bishop 1992, Hogget 1992, Geltmaker 1992, Moos 1989, Knopp 1992, Valentine 1993 and

g) A reassertion of the questions with regard to nature and the environment – Bordessa 1993, Emel 1991, Fitzsimmons 1989, Matless 1991, 1992 a, 1992b, which has taken many forms, including a fresh look at the relationships between place and health (Gesler 1993, Kearns 1993).

Therefore, one can say that by 1991, post modernism had acquired a definite place in geographical thinking though it faced several contentions.

2. Postmodern Urbanism

Postmodern urbanism is a phenomenon based on the return of middle-income people from suburbs to cities. Often this is accompanied by gentrification, the upgrading of older, run-down dwellings into modern and fashionable residences. Soja uses his post modernism in the context of a city to analyse the patterns that exist in the city as well the historical processes that have resulted in these patterns.

In the north, we are also seeing a significant out-migration of African Americans who started moving into northern cities in two huge waves, one following each of the World Wars. By and large, these out-migrants are moving back to the south and to rural and suburban areas.

Postmodern urbanism also includes the concept of “infill.” This refers to demolishing older buildings in the city’s core and replacing them with new Commercial buildings or “self-contained” urban villages. These urban villages are designed to limit the use of the automobile, thus helping to cut back on the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. Postmodern urbanism emphasizes new concepts in architecture, living space, and more open channels of communication among people.

    The concept of postmodern urbanism is based primarily on the assumption that the global capitalist economy has fundamentally transformed in its mode of production and in its relations of production. Such logic is imbued in Dear and Flusty (1998) with the distinction placed on ‘flexism’ as having fundamentally altered conventional political economy. The two trends identified within this are automation, and greater freedom of capitalist enterprises. Automation refers to the natural revolutionizing of means of production, and the freedom of enterprise in this case refers to its ability to circumvent barriers, regulations, and other constraints such as distance, and commitments to establishing equilibrium with labour and capital. The specific configuration of Fordism suited the needs of the capitalist class at that particular time, however it was also contingent on the relative pressure being asserted by the combined forces of production which was labour, and the power they could exercise in negotiating for a better position. The creation of the welfare state functioned to allow capitalism to continue while allowing certain concessions to the working class.

Postmodernism as it intersects with the rise of neoliberal economic doctrine occupies the same ideological tendency in that they both proclaim the end of history triumphantly, and they seek to obscure the predations of capitalism. The trends which Shearmur (2008) highlights about the negation of the very purpose to seek knowledge, closely relates with Fukuyama’s thesis on the end of history coinciding with the end of the cold war and resulting in the universal victory of democratic liberalism (Fukuyama, 1989). In this view, the questions have already been settled over who is right and wrong, therefore postmodernist discourse adopts a moral relativist cause. This is supported in ideology, but it is also affected in practice by the means capital asserts its authority in imposing policies which further the interests of accumulation within a realm that can be controlled and conducive to further accumulation.

Harvey’s theory is based on the triad – ‘space, time and money’ and emphasizes that the fragmentation of flexible accumulation is simulated in the dispersion of politics, philosophy and social thinking. But when he talks of post modern urbanism he concentrates on the global level with exclusive emphasis on architecture and urban design in relation to spaces of consumption.

For Dear (1991) we live in a world of post modern consciousness and thus it is of no use ignoring it. He opines that the books of Soja and Harvey had demolished the vibrancy of this discourse and even led to its premature death. This is because both the writings are undemocratic and mono-logical as their synthesis is inadequate and incomplete to answers the raised questions. He stresses that post modernism is more about complication and difference or variation which is very aptly reflected in the urban architecture as an urban landscape presents a blueprint for the social world where localization and fragmentation of social world is clearly visible. Thus, a post modern city is a space where conventional institutions of control, authority, power and organization are not visible anymore and at the same time no new modes of control or authority have taken their place. This creates a vacuum, which is being filled by the new emerging socio-cultural, political and economic relationships.

3. Los Angles School of Post-Modern Urbanism

The concept of postmodernism describes an emergent paradigm shift within mainstream discourse. A Los Angeles school has emerged as a progenitor of postmodern discourses as applied to urban geography studies. In Postmodern Urbanism authors Michael Dear and Steven Flusty (1998) identify Los Angeles as the paradigmatic city which is shaping postmodern urban processes and socio-spatial forms. Richard Shearmur (2006) in Chicago and L.A.: A clash of Epistemologies, challenges the Los Angeles school on the ground of unsound scientific practices which result in poorly grounded research. In The Paradigmatic City: Post-industrial illusion and the Los Angeles school, James Curry and Martin Kenney assess the history of Los Angeles and its present role in shaping the world economy. The sum of research on postmodernism has effectively connected the unscientific approach employed with its inability to produce accurate interpretation of global political economy.

Highlighting Los Angeles dominant role in the world economy and in influencing urban development, Dear and Flusty (1998) use Los Angeles as a microcosm to understand greater changes occurring in the global economy. Postmodern space can be characterized as a resistance toward modernist top-down planning and seeks to cultivate older styles in the same vein as Jane Jacobs, leading to the formation of a postmodern consciousness. Dear and Flusty (1998) consider that the key features which distinguish postmodern from the modern, are the regimes of regulation which accompany the already existing modernist regimes of accumulation, and the economic doctrine of flexism. Regimes of regulation refer to the built environment which supports command and control cantersof surveillance, policing measures, planning which seeks to fragment spaces, and the efforts amongst the rich to further polarize and segregate themselves from the poor through perpetual discourses of othering and minoritization. By ‘Flexism,’ Dear and Flusty (1998) consider the economic mechanisms which allow capital to be more flexible, in the way it can shift employment, or operations depending on where the profit is highest, this has lead to deindustrialization and loss of jobs,

which is only partially mitigated by the information economy. Central to postmodern urbanism are the narratives created to describe randomized capitalist accumulation, and the increasing flexibility of corporations to effect their will.

Within the urban geography discipline, the Los Angeles school remains a subject of fierce debate. Shearmur (2008) examines research approaches used by different schools, pointing to the superiority of scientific method in establishing transparent, meticulous, and reproducible analysis. The Chicago and Los Angeles schools can be contrasted on their basis of analysis, while Shearmur (2008) acknowledges the Los Angeles school has its own way of acquiring knowledge, he points to the depth and volume of research conducted by the Chicago school and its relative utility. The advancement of a theory of ‘random’ capitalism, simply does not follow empirical evidence. Shearmur (2008) specifically attacks the postmodernist Los Angeles school on the basis of two contentions, first the polyvocality approach of the postmodernist school which seeks to give all voices equal agency, and second the ethical questions of determining which narratives are right and which are wrong. If all things are equal, there is no point in studying further, Shearmur (2008) concludes that this inability to have an effective epistemological basis prevents the Los Angeles school from making real strides in scientific evidence-based research.

Curry and Kenney (2000) analyze the standpoint of the Los Angeles school in its ability to interpret economic and social statistics and employ them effectively in a field of study. The triumphalist tone of Dear and Flusty (1998) was particularly problematic as it highlighted a dynamic of utopian vs. dystopian narratives and became further estranged from scientific analysis as a result. In the early 1990s when Los Angeles faced an economic downturn, one which Curry and Kenney (2000) detail was perpetual and long term, the Los Angeles school has been forced to rescind some of its more lofty claims. Curry and Kenney (2000) situate Los Angeles as such an exceptional city that it would be impossible to project it as a universal model for all cities. The origins of the west was dependent on capital transfers, the military instalments and defence industries which followed were much the same enabling Los Angeles fortunes to be largely tied to the permanent arms economy as opposed to normal economic cycles. Curry and Kenney (2000) detail the economic problems of Los Angeles as having originated in the outsourcing of jobs and being unable to replace them with other high wage jobs, and having the effect of numerous failed ventures to rejuvenate growth. Los Angeles is a city being shaped more than it is shaping the global economy.

Insofar as resistance is concerned, the research into political action and organizing are weak at best. Actual prospects of revolution are totally absent from discourses, the lack of agency which is attributed to actors in the models presented by the Los Angeles school do fall neatly in a utopian/dystopian dichotomy where all power resides with an implacable elite. The practical utility of the Los Angeles school is undermined by its inability to understand concrete conditions. Effective political action rests in the ability to appreciate agency and cultivate class conscious to mobilize forces.

4. Conclusions

Dear and Flusty (1998) present have come up with some interesting points when they bring the discourse on post modernism in geography but they failed in their attempt as the arguments put forward are neither coherent nor convincing arguments; rather are some places they are self-contradicting. The main aim was to establish the Los Angeles School of postmodern urbanism. The purpose was to bring a new light in urban geography but it fails to generate even little heat and leads to the creation of lot of smoke that shadows the basic understanding of cities. This is because the whole premise is based on a dubious assumption that our society has moved from a modern to a post modern era. One may agree with Sui ( 1999) who states that “Postmodern Urbanism” may reveal the failures of postmodernism. In its way of providing possibilities for a new radical breakthrough in geographical thinking postmodern urbanism has rather built its own coffin as it neither provides a new vision nor a new city but only a new style.

References

• Daniel Z Sui (1999) Postmodern Urbanism Disrobed: or Why Postmodern Urbanism is a dead end for Urban Geography. Urban Geography 20 (5), 403-11.Francis Fukuyama (1992) The End of History? The National Interest. (Summer 1989).
• James Curry and Martin Kenney (1999) The paradigmatic city: post-industrial illusion and the Los Angeles School. Antipode 31(1), 1-28.
• Michael Dear (1991) The Premature Demise of Postmodern Urbanism. Cultural Anthropology 6 (4), 538-52.
• Michael Dear (1994) Postmodern Human Geography: A Preliminary Assessment, Erdkunde 48 (1), 2 -13.
• Michael Dear and Steven Flusty (1998) Postmodern urbanism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(1), 50-72.
• Richard Sheamur (2006) Chicago and LA: a clash of epistemologies. Urban Geography 29(2), 167-176.
• http://www.academia.edu/6284853/Postmodern_Urbanism_A_Brief_Investigation