The radical break in late twentieth-century urbanization

Urban scholars have recently claimed a radical break in urbanization. Dear (2000) describes an emergent postmodern metropolis exemplified by Los Angeles that is not only different in form from the modern metropolis it replaced but shaped by novel and globalized economic and political forces. Amin and Thrift (2002), Gottdeiner (2002) and Soja (2000), among many others and with few exceptions (Beauregard and Haila 2000), concur with this general assessment. Collectively, these theorists argue that during the 1970s a 'sea change' (Soja 2000, 149) occurred. The centrality that cities once enjoyed and the dominant agglomerative tendencies of previous forms of urbanization have faded. Hence, existing urban theories and models of governance have to be discarded and new understandings launched. Only in this way, such theorists argue, can we grasp the city of fragmented spatialities, multiple flows, polyglot socialities, dynamic networks, and spatial and temporal openness. As critical and sceptical readers, how should we respond to this claim? What work is the 'radical break' doing in the writings of these scholars? To begin, we should look at its empirical credibility. But, we should not stop there. Rather, we need to recognize how the claim is motivated as much by a theoretical breakdown as by an actual rupture in the processes of urbanization. For advanced capitalist societies, the claim is plausible and yet problematic. Supportive evidence exists. Edge cities have seemingly proliferated since the early 1970s. Years of industrial city decline drew to an end. Immigration returned, at least in the United States and much to the benefit of its cities. Emergent, neo-liberal states compelled their city-regions to be competitive in global networks and their economies increasingly turned to advanced services, knowledge industries and tourism to main tain growth. These were differences that mattered. Yet, continuities also exist. For example, industrial satellites were common in the early twentieth century and might be considered a kind of edge city. Regardless, enough empirical justification can be assembled to make the claim more or less credible. No such claim is ever wholly empirical, however. Nor should it be. Evidence must make sense have meaning as part of a more broadly cast concep tual perspective. Otherwise, we cannot fully grasp the forces that give cities their character and distin guish them in different places and times. More bluntly, what counts as fact depends on the inter pretation given to it. An empirical claim has to be theoretically meaningful. Traditional approaches to urbanization provide little conceptual space for an underlying rupture. They cast urbanization as a universal and relentless process that ends only when a country is fully urbanized (Tisdale 1942). The forces of concentra tion wax and wane or unfold unevenly across the landscape, but they never cease or disappear. Modernization theory is similarly unhelpful (Davis and Golden 1954). It posits a seamless relationship between urbanization and economic development. The mechanization of agriculture, the growth of cities and the expansion of the national economy are mutually supportive and progressive.