September 21, 2015 The City and Citizenship1. Cities not things or spaces, but the results of...

April 19, 2023 The City and Citizenship 1

Cities not things or spaces, but the results of processes City plans an obvious example Harvey more concerned with struggle

Cities (as “things”) not merely the sites of contestation (or neutral containers) , but the results of past struggles

This is “dialectical” – processes constitute things and things shape/reinforce processes

It’s also “multiple”- different struggles (e.g. regarding race or gender) constitute different aspects of the city’s form over time

The city’s form is a “palimpsest”: “a series of layers constituted and constructed at different historical moments all superimposed upon each other” (p. 228)



Building a High Rise behind the old façade (Wabash east of Marshall Field’s, 2002)


Haymarket Square area


Chicago’s East Side (Under the Skyway)

Designing community is problematic Trying to build “community” by shaping public space is a “thing”-

based approach to solving urban problems, e.g. crime In practice, communities practice exclusion

“Militant particularism” is rooted in process and can more concretely shape urban space Urban problems often addressed instead by the emergence of

struggles based in very local spaces, i.e. these militant movements are “particular”

These are multiple and occur over time and shape how cities exist as things – e.g. they can influence what gets built (and what doesn’t)

A process of generalizing from these particularisms is the only likely road to revolution (p. 232)

Is this different from NIMBY? Are such localized militancies ever very effective?

Consider resistance to “big plans” E.g. in Chicago (building UIC in the middle of Little Italy, uprooting

the Maxwell street market, tearing down public housing)


Cities typically seen as un-natural things, anti-ecological, in opposition to nature

Better to see the framing of cities as a process of environmental modification

E.g. Chicago as “urbs in horto” Obvious in things like parks, lawns, forest

preserves What about “overgrown” lots, community gardens,

green roofs, farmers’ markets? Consider the ecological critique of sprawl

Seen as destructive of natural spaces (and wasteful of energy)

Urban growth at margins typically consumes farmland, not wilderness


Focus on public image, not individual images

Focus on what’s physical and perceptible, not on social meaning, function, etc.

Five key elements which combine to give a city a physical identity, its “public image” paths edges districts nodes landmarks


Paths “the channels along which the observer … moves. People

observe the city while moving through it” (p. 439) E.g. streets, sidewalks, footpaths Often more important to occasional visitor Defined by characteristic activities, facades, origins and

destinations Edges

Lines that constitute boundaries rather than lines of motion

May be barriers (literally or socially), e.g. “on the other side of the tracks”

Chicago examples: Lake Michigan, Chicago River, streets dividing one

neighborhood from another


Districts “relatively large city areas which the observer can mentally

go inside of, and which have some common character” (p. 442)

may be too “general” for those really familiar (they notice the fine-grained differences)

E.g. neighborhoods in Chicago Northwest suburbs?

Nodes “the strategic foci into which the observer can enter,

typically either junctions of paths, or concentrations of some characteristic”

E.g. Union Station, airports, Irving Park stop on Blue Line Landmarks

Distinctive physical element, often large or unique E.g. Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Statue of Liberty in New York Those familiar may with a city may “navigate” by landmark,

not so much by formal paths


September 21, 2015 The City and Citizenship1. Cities not things or spaces, but the results of...

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