'Contested cities: Social Processes and Spatial form'. By Nick Jewson and Susanne MacGregor

Early this century there was no more than a dozen cities that would post a population of 1 Million or more people with just 7 per cent classified as urban. As time has past in 2000 there were more then 500 cities that posted a population of more than 1 Million people. If these trends continue soon nearly half the worlds population will be classified as urban.  

With this rapid increase in Urbanisation it posts some fundamental questions that need to be addressed.  

- why is it that the urban so frequently disappears from our discussions of broader political-economic processes and social trends?

- what has happened to the category ‘urban’?

These are just  few of the questions that have been created through this rapid increase of Urbanisation.

 

Some commentators are predicting that if this current trend continues we will be producing Marginalisation, Disempowerment, Alienation, pollution and finally degradation. In the past he capital has regarded cities as important places, we now find that they are no longer concerned about cities.

 

Throughout this reading Jewson and MacGregor make some very interesting points. These include:

• Re-conceptualise the urban as a production of space and spatio-temporality to a dialectical relationship between process and time
• Assumption that the 'community will save current city's mess
•  No mention of cities in ecological literature - therefore failure to account for over 50% of the world's population

 

 

We have to move the urban, and the urbanizing process, into a more central position in our debates and discussions about ecological, social, political and economic change

 

 

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