Postmetropolis

Edward W Soja is Professor of Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has written extensively on urban social life, planning and theory. His previous books include Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (Verso, 1989)and Thirdspace (Blackwell, 1996).

• List of Illustrations xPreface xiiAcknowledgments xixPart I Remapping the Geohistory of Cityspace 1Introduction 3Outlining the Geohistory of Cityspace 4Defining the Conceptual Framework 6The spatial specificity of urbanism 7The trialectics of cityspace 10Synekism: the stimulus of urban agglomeration 12The regionality of cityspace 161 Putting Cities First 19Re-excavating the Origins of Urbanism 19The conventional sequence: hunting and gathering – agriculture – villages – cities – states 20A provocative inversion: putting cities first 24Learning from Jericho 27Learning from Çatal Hüyük 36James Mellaart and the urban Neolithic 36Learning from New Obsidian 42Learning more from Çatal Hüyük 462 The Second Urban Revolution 50The New Urbanization 51Space, Knowledge, and Power in Sumeria 55Ur and the New Urbanism 60Fast Forward >> to the Third Urban Revolution 673 The Third Urban Revolution: Modernity and Urban-industrial Capitalism 71Cityspace and the Succession of Modernities 72The Rise of the Modern Industrial Metropolis 76Made in Manchester 78Remade in Chicago 844 Metropolis in Crisis 95Rehearsing the Break: the Urban Crisis of the 1960s 95Manuel Castells and the Urban Question 100David Harvey’s Social Justice and the City 105Summarizing the Geohistory of Capitalist Cityspace 1095 An Introduction to the Conurbation of Greater Los Angeles 117Los Angeles – from Space: A View from My Window 120A Perpetual Alternation Between Vision and its Forgetting 1211870–1900: the WASPing of Los Angeles 1231900–1920: the Regressive–Progressive Era 1271920–1940: roaring from war to war 1291940–1970: the Big Orange explodes 131Looking back to the future: Los Angeles in 1965 1351970 and beyond: the New Urbanization 140Part II Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis 145Introduction 147Border Dialogues: Previewing the Postmetropolitan Discourses 147Conceptualizing the New Urbanization Processes 148Grounding the Discourses 1546 The Postfordist Industrial Metropolis: Restructuring the Geopolitical Economy of Urbanism 156Representative Texts 156Pathways into Urban Worlds of Production 157The geographical anatomy of industrial urbanism 157Production-work-territory: reworking the divisions of labor 160Manufacturing matters: against postindustrial sociology 164Crossing industrial divides 166Post-ford-ism 169The empowerment of flexibility 171Getting lean and mean: the surge in inequality 173Into the regional world: the rediscovery of synekism 175Localizing Industrial Urbanism 180Postfordist industrial cartographies 181Developmental dynamics of the industrial complex 185Concluding in the realm of public policy 1877 Cosmopolis: The Globalization of Cityspace 189Representative Texts 189Recomposing the Discourse on Globalization 191The globality of production and the production of globality 192Regional worlds of globalization 197New geographies of power 202Adding culture to the global geopolitical economy 208The reconstruction of social meaning in the space of flows 212Globalized neoliberalism: a brief note 216Metropolis Unbound: Conceptualizing Globalized Cityspace 218The world city hypothesis 219Commanding our attention: the rise of global cities 222Urban dualism, the Informational City and the urban-regional process 227The turn to cosmopolis 2298 Exopolis: The Restructuring of Urban Form 233Representative Texts 233Metropolis Transformed 234Megacities and metropolitan galaxies 235Outer Cities, postsuburbia, and the end of the Metropolis Era 238Edge Cities and the optimistic envisioning of postmetropolitan geographies 243City Lite and postmetropolitan nostalgia 246Simulating the New Urbanism 248Exopolis as synthesis 250Representing the Exopolis in Los Angeles 251Starting in the New Downtown 251Inner City blues 254The middle landscape 258Off-the-edge cities 2599 Fractal City: Metropolarities and the Restructured Social Mosaic 264Representative Texts 264Manufacturing Inequality in the Postmetropolis 266Normalizing inequality: the extremes at both ends 267Variations on the theme of intrinsic causality 268Describing metropolarities: empirical sociologies and labor market dynamics 272Moving beyond equality politics 279Remapping the Fractal City of Los Angeles 282An overview of the ethnic mosaic 283Mono-ethnic geographies: segregating cityspace 291Multicultural geographies: mapping diversity 29410 The Carceral Archipelago: Governing Space in the Postmetropolis 298Representative Texts 298Conceptualizing the Carceral Archipelago 299Fortress L.A. and the rhetoric of social warfare 300The destruction of public space and the architectonics of security-obsessed urbanism 303Policing space: doing time in Los Angeles 307Entering the Forbidden City: the imprisonment of Downtown 309Homegrown Revolution: HOAs, CIDs, gated communities, and insular lifestyles 312Beyond the Blade Runner scenario: the spatial restructuring of urban governmentality 31911 Simcities: Restructuring the Urban Imaginary 323Representative Texts 323Re-imagining Cityspace: Travels in Hyperreality 324Jean Baudrillard and the precession of simulacra 326Celeste Olalquiaga and postmodern psychasthenia 330Cyberspace and the electronic generation of hyperreality 333M. Christine Boyer and the imaginary real world of Cybercities 337Simcities, Simcitizens, and hyperreality-generated crisis 339SimAmerica: a concluding critique 345Part III Lived Space: Rethinking 1992 in Los Angeles 349Introduction 35112 LA 1992: Overture to a Conclusion 355Revisionings 355Bodies, Cities, Texts: The Case of Citizen Rodney King (by Barbara Hooper) 359Inscriptions 359Somatography: the order in place 361The Trial: Us v. Them 36813 LA 1992: The Spaces of Representation 372Event-Geography-Remembering 372Visible antipodes: Inner versus Outer City 373Normalized enclosures: the development of common interests 376The Invisible Riots Remembered 379Downtowns: this is not the 1960s 379Pico-Union and the desaparacidos 386Sa-i-ku and other commemorations 389A repetitive ending 39214 Postscript: Critical Reflections on the Postmetropolis 396New Beginnings I: Postmetropolis in Crisis 396The downturn of postfordism 397Too fulsome globalization? 399Suddenly everywhere is Pomona 401Repadded white bunkers 402Deconstructed modes of regulation 403Simgovernment in crisis 405New Beginnings II: Struggles for Spatial Justice and Regional Democracy 407Bibliography 416Name Index 431Subject Index 436

"Traditional sociological and urban design critiques of the American city have left vacant a wide middle ground of critical enquiry. Between statistical analysis and physical critique, Edward Soja attempts to bridge the divide by proposing a 'third way' for urban studies. The result is a broad overview, ranging between sociological and cultural points of view, with the provocative possibility of pairing the two in a new urban paradigm." Tom Leslie, World Architecture"Coming to the field as a relative novice, I found this book more straightforward and thought provoking than I expected...it is sure to be of interest and value to students and researchers alike." Regional Studies. "Postmetropolis effectively illuminates the rich complexity and multidisciplinary of urban and regional restructuring in the current era... will serve as a useful resource." Journal of Economic and Social Geography. "Postmetropolis is magisterial in its historic sweep" Thomas L. Bell, University of Tennessee.