Urbanization Processes: An Epistemological Reorientation

Abstract

Today, urban research is confronted with urbanization processes that are unfolding far beyond the realm of agglomerations and megaregions. The entire planet has become the arena of urbanization processes. Novel patterns of excentric urbanization are crystallizing in agricultural areas, rain forests, and the oceans, challenging inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded zone and a dense settlement type. However, we are still poorly equipped with concepts and theories that allow us to grasp the planetary extension of urbanization processes and understand the dramatic transformations affecting the most diverse landscapes and territories across the planet.

These observations have sparked fundamental debates about the epistemology of the
urban. They have catalyzed the development of the conception of planetary urbanization
as a tool for better understanding the contemporary patterns and pathways of urbanization.
Its analytical core is the distinction between concentrated, extended, and differential urbanization (Brenner and Schmid 2015). While the term concentrated urbanization denotes the formation and growth of agglomerations, resulting in dense urban areas, the term extended urbanization invites us to look at what is seemingly outside of the urban and to study processes of urbanization “beyond the city” that are transforming sparsely settled areas. The third term, differential urbanization, expresses the potential of urbanization to generate spaces for encounter and social interaction that create a different urban world. Processes of extended, concentrated, and differential urbanization should be understood as vectors, not as territories. They may develop on the same territories at the same time, overlapping and permeating each other.