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Critical Urban Theory

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 October 21, 2023  Architecture, Urban Planning, Urbanism

Addressing the intense contradictory social concerns and their influence on the
urban context has to be taken into serious consideration. Various outrages such
as protests, demonstrations, and strikes are often being communicated in the
form of violence. The urban theory has been a crucial part of social science
research ever since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw the rise
of what are usually considered to be the first “modern” cities in Europe and North
America. It seems that it is becoming more crucial that urban theory creates new
ideas and thinking in connection to the construction of more inclusive and just
urban futures as we progress into the second decade of what theorists, analysts,
and critics refer to as “the urban age” or “the urban century.”

The theory is what makes it possible to think critically and grow intellectually. It is
crucial for the creation of academic knowledge as well as for influencing the
methodology that academics use to learn about cities.
Also Read: Urban Design Terminology 
Critical Urban Theory

The definition of Critical Urban Theory goes by “Critical urban theory rejects
inherited disciplinary divisions of labor and statist, technocratic, market-driven
and market-oriented forms of urban knowledge.” The importance and urgency of
making our urban context more humanizing than its current form, it is important
to be aware of the various concepts of Critical Urban Theory. The critical urban
theory emphasizes how urban space is socially contested, ideologically
influenced, and consequently flexible. The major components of urban theory
constitute the assessment of socio-scientific ideologies, power, injustice,
exploitation, and inequality prevailing in cities.

Ideas, vocabulary, and phrases used in urban theory are intended to understand
cities and urban life. Urban theorists try to provide explanations for spatial
expressions of cultural, economic, political, and social activities and processes.
Urban theory can be expansive and include a high degree of abstraction, or it can
be grounded on empirical, localized, or contextual knowledge of the processes
that lead to the formation, operation, and change of cities. Both ‘big’ urban
concerns and those centered on the ‘ordinary’ and daily can be discussed in
urban theory. Urban theorists aim to make the city comprehensible or readable,
but they are more concerned with explaining than with describing.

Source: Photo by Zarif Ali on Unsplash

In addition to statist, technocratic, market-driven, and market-oriented forms of

urban knowledge, critical urban theory critiques inherited disciplinary divisions
of labor. Even while these possibilities are currently being stifled by prevailing
institutional arrangements, practices, and ideologies, it asserts that a different,

more democratic, socially equitable, and sustainable form of urbanization is still
feasible. The historical specificity of any approach to critical social theory,
whether urban or not, is one of the key issues to be highlighted below. The work
of the Frankfurt School and Marx which was introduced during the initial stages
of capitalism- Fordist-Keynesian and competitive are currently forward-moving
destructive capitalism development.

The critical urban theory emphasizes how urban space is socially contested,
ideologically influenced, and consequently flexible. Critique concepts, and more
specifically critical theory, go beyond simple descriptors, though. They contain
substantial social theory that comes from a variety of schools of enlightenment
and post-enlightenment social philosophy. Thus, the critical urban theory is
based on an antagonistic interaction with current urban forms in general as well
as with inherited urban bits of knowledge. And it is therefore a constantly
debatable field that uses, critiques, and sometimes even rejects prior theoretical
work to provide fresh insights into the urban experience.
Also Read: Urban Morphology

Main Components of Critical Theory

Critical theory can be categorized into 4 main propositions based on the theories
of writers and researchers. They are: Critical theory is reflexive, Criticism of
instrumental reason is a component of critical theory, Critical theory highlights
the gap between the possible and the actual, and critical theory is theory. The
above-mentioned propositions are mutually constitutive and closely intertwined.


 Four mutually constitutive propositions on critical thery. Source: What is
critical urban theory? Neil Brenner

Critical Theory is reflexive:

According to the Frankfurt School tradition, the theory is seen as simultaneously

enabled and directed toward certain historical contexts and conditions. At least
two important implications are derived from this view. First, the critical theory
requires a complete rejection of any viewpoint that asserts to be ‘outside’ of the
historically specific context, regardless of whether it is positivistic, metaphysical,
transcendental, or any other. Second, critical theory from the Frankfurt School
goes beyond a broad interpretive concern with the contextual nature of all
knowledge. The question of how opposing, hostile forms of knowledge,
subjectivity, and consciousness could evolve within a historical social formation is
the subject of this essay more particularly.


 Frankfurt School and Critical Theory – Literary Theory and Criticism

Critical theorists approach this problem by highlighting the contradictory,

shattered, or fragmented nature of capitalism as a social whole. There could be
no critical consciousness of the totality if it were closed, non-contradictory, or
complete. There would also be no need for critique, and criticism would be
structurally impractical. As a result of society’s self-contradictory method of
development, critique only becomes relevant since it conflicts with itself. Critical
theorists, in this sense, are interested in more than just locating themselves and
their research objectives within the development of modern capitalism.

Also Read: Urban Planning Terminology

Criticism of instrumental Reason is a Component of Critical

Theory:

Using Max Weber’s works as a foundation, they argued against the societal
spread of means-ends rationality that is directed toward the purposive-rational
(Zweckrationale), an effective linking of means to objectives without questioning
the ends themselves. Most importantly, in this case, Frankfurt School theorists
also applied this critique to the field of social science. This critique had
consequences for different areas of industrial organization, technology, and
administration. In this view, the critical theory includes a strong rejection of
instrumental modes of social scientific knowledge—that is, those created to
enhance the efficacy and efficiency of current institutional structures, to control
and dominate the social and physical environment, and therefore to support
existing systems of power.

Frankfurt School researchers maintained that a critical theory must make clear
its practical-political and moral tendencies, rather than embracing a limited or
technical vision, in line with their historically reflective approach to social science.
Instrumentalist approaches to knowledge inevitably assume their independence
from the subject of study. Normative problems, however, cannot be avoided
once that distinction is accepted and it is recognized that the knower is
immersed inside the same real-world social context as the one being
investigated. Thus, there is a direct link between the claim that reflexivity exists
and the argument against instrumental reason.

Because of this, critical theorists do not refer to the issue of how to ‘apply’ theory
to practice when they talk about the so-called theory/practice problem.


Critical Theory highlights the gap between the possible and the
actual:

According to Therborn’s (2008) argument, the Frankfurt School accepts a

dialectical critique of capitalist modernity—that is, one that both affirms and
criticizes the systematic exclusions, oppressions, and injustices that are fostered
by this social structure. Critical theory has to uncover the emancipatory
potentials that are both ingrained in and simultaneously suppressed by modern
capitalism, in addition to investigating the forms of power connected to it.
In a lot of Frankfurt School material, this tendency is characterized by a “search
for a revolutionary subject,” or the desire to identify a catalyst for radical social
change who could realize the potentials unleashed but repressed by capitalism.
The Frankfurt School’s search for a revolutionary subject during the postwar
period, however, resulted in a rather gloomy pessimism regarding the likelihood
of social transformation and, particularly in the work of Adorno and Horkheimer,
a retreat into relatively abstract philosophical and aesthetic concerns (Postone,
1993).

Marcuse takes a different stance on this issue in the “Introduction” to One-

Dimensional Man, nevertheless. He concurs with his Frankfurt School peers that
late 20th-century capitalism lacked any obvious “agents or agencies of social
change” in contrast to the formative years of capitalist industrialization; in other
words, the proletariat was no longer acting as a class “for itself.” In the context of
this, Marcuse claims that the somewhat abstract nature of critical theory at the
time he was writing it was inextricably related to the lack of a clear-cut agent of
radical, emancipatory social transformation.

Critical Theory is Theory:


Critical theory is boldly abstract in the Frankfurt School. The evolution of formal
concepts, generalizations about historical trends, deductive and inductive modes
of argumentation, and many types of historical analysis are its distinguishing
features. It is also defined by epistemological and philosophical reflections. It
may also be based on empirical study, i.e., evidence, whether structured using
conventional or critical methodologies.
As a result, critical theory is not meant to be a blueprint for any specific route of
social change, a plan for achieving that change, or a how-to manual for social
movements. It is specifically meant to educate the strategic viewpoint of
progressive, radical, or revolutionary social and political actors, and it may well
have mediations to the sphere of practice.

However, significantly, the Frankfurt School’s understanding of critical theory is

concentrated on an analytically earlier moment of abstraction than the well-
known Leninist question, “What is to be done?”

Correlation between Urbanization and Critical Urban Theory

Although Marx’s writings had a significant impact on the field of critical urban
studies after 1968, the Frankfurt School’s writings have received little to no
attention from those who have contributed to this discipline. The four
statements that make up the conception of critical theory are as follows:

1. They oppose the idea of theory as a “handmaiden” to immediate,

practical, or instrumental concerns and emphasize the need for abstract,
theological arguments explaining the nature of urban dynamics under
capitalism.
2. They reject market-driven, instrumentalist, and technocratic approaches
to urban research that encourage the preservation and reproduction of
already existing urban formations.
3. They consider that knowledge of urban issues, especially critical
viewpoints, is historically particular and mediated by power relations and
4. They are interested in identifying opportunities for radical, alternative
forms of urbanization that are latent but structurally suppressed in
modern cities/

These ideas appear to together form an important epistemological foundation

for the field as a whole, while any one contribution to critical urban theory may
be more sensitive to some of them than to others. In this sense, Frankfurt School
theorists as well as Marx and other thinkers had extensively tilled the intellectual
and political ground before critical urban theory emerged. Since the creation of
this subject in the early 1970s, methodological, epistemological, and substantive
disagreements among critical urbanists have been quite prominent, sometimes
even acrimonious.

However, given the early 21st century’s ongoing evolution and diversification of
the field of critical urban studies, its status as a putatively “critical” theory merits
close examination and organized discussion.

What is critical about critical urban theory, to borrow Fraser’s question from the
topic of research covered in this issue of CITY? The meanings and modalities of
critique can never be held constant; rather, they must constantly be reimagined
concerning the unevenly evolving political-economic geographies of this process
and the varied conflicts it engenders. This is because the process of capitalist
urbanization continues to move forward in a manner that results in creative
destruction on a global scale. Marx’s concept of critique and the Frankfurt
School’s interpretation of critical theory was ingrained in historically particular
forms of capitalism. Each of these approaches expressly considered itself to be
immersed inside such a formation, consistent with their necessity for reflexivity
and was geared self-consciously towards presenting the latter to critique.

The typology of urban theories in expressing the concept of urbanization.

Source: Researchgate

Any attempt to adapt or recreate critical theory, whether urban or otherwise, in

the early 21st century must place a prominent focus on this demand for
reflexivity, as described above.

The Eight Thesis

A series of theses researched by various authors to address unique issues of

critical urban theories are as follows.

Thesis 1: Space considered a politics


How is space politically charged? The leaders of the world in the age of cities, as
well as their architects and urban planners, must have known that what Henri
Lefebvre termed the “creation of space” had something to do with what Antonio
Gramsci called political hegemony, both objectively and subjectively.

As readers of Mike Davis’s book on Los Angeles or Neil Smith’s book on the
“revanchist city” can attest, Benjamin represents the primordial scene of
capitalist-imperial-colonial urbanism, whose inherently violent form haunts the
best exposés of radical urban thought even after modernity was discursively
replaced by postmodernism and capitalism by globalization. But given the bleak
situation, Davis describes in The Planet of Slums (2006), it’s easy to forget that
architecture and urban planning once had a revolutionary goal: to fundamentally
alter both space and society. Today, however, they are designed to mask social
tensions rather than resolve them, if not doomed to pimping for city
governments lusting for “public-private” affairs with corporate capital.

Thesis 2: Modernism as explained by Le Corbusier, Andre Breton,

and Lenin

The unduly determined conjuncture framed by the two World Wars is the most
misunderstood point in the sequence of historical events, especially in the age of
postmodern amnesia: modernism.

Thesis 3: Modernization

What happened to the modernist revolution? By returning to Le Corbusier’s even

more famous question, “Architecture or Revolution?” radical urban theory might
do worse than confront this subject through architecture and urban planning. In
the famous final sentence of Towards a New Architecture, which was published
in 1923, he responded polemically to his rhetorical question: “Revolution can be
avoided” (Corbusier 1986 [1923]: 289).
The message was that without a revolution, urban design and architecture could
end Europe’s financial problems. It’s vital to keep in mind that this issue first
came up during the height of modernism in Europe when both objective and
subjective factors seemed to be favorable for a fundamental overhaul of both
space and society in the Old World.

Thesis 4: Americanism

To put that into perspective, it is impossible to comprehend the transition of

architecture, urban planning, and much else from modernism to modernization
in the era of what Antonio Gramsci called “Americanism and Fordism” without
considering the decline of the likelihood of revolution in the West.

Thesis 5: Postmodernism

The most insightful Marxist students of the city, Benjamin and Lefebvre, both
regarded bourgeois urbanism in this way as a clash between the application of
new technology and those utopian yearnings present in the social imaginary. The 
Dialectics of Seeing (1989: 89), written by Benjamin scholar Buck-Morss, calls
capitalist “‘urban renewal’ projects'” a “classic example of reification” because
they “attempted to create social utopia by changing the arrangement of buildings
and streets – objects in space – while leaving social relationships intact.”

Thesis 6: Urban Theory of Marxist

The destiny of Marxism under similar conditions is mirrored by what happened

to radical urbanism after the revolution was stymied by state socialism and
removed from the political agenda in the West by military-Keynesianism. Both
predicted a crippling separation between practice and theory, or a death of
practice compensated by a new life in theory, which was itself mostly performed
in the realm of academics rather than politics.

Thesis 7: City politics and economy

Architecture almost contains the necessary link with the economy, with which it
interacts through commissions and land values, of all the arts. In other words,
urbanization has a closer connection to the processes of capital than political
conflict or cultural production, which, in the case of space, makes the dreaded
economic decision to decide in the end more real than imagined. Space is made
extremely adaptable to rigorous political-economic notions that are more
economic than political by proximity to capital in this way. That level of accuracy
in space economics comes at a cost, one that is unaffordable when it comes to
space politics.

Thesis 8: Urban revolution is a Socialist revolution

A socialist revolution cannot occur without an urban revolution, and vice versa
for an urban revolution to occur without a revolution in everyday life. In light of
this, Lefebvre’s idea of the right to the city must be understood — not as yet
another entry on the self-contradictory liberal democratic list of “human rights,”
but rather as the right to a fundamentally different reality.

The "creative cities": New urban growth ideology

Urban philosophy is not always helpful in advancing “cities for people.” Some of
these beliefs enhance the right to the city of those who currently live thereby
serving as an ideological justification for cities built for “profit.” Despite its
conceptual and methodological flaws, Richard Florida’s (2004, 2005) influential
idea of the creative class has gotten positive feedback from local scientists and
politicians in North America and Europe. Florida’s theory is regarded to contain
highly specific theoretical claims, to provide appropriate empirical support for
these claims, and to provide a workable plan for policy intervention.

Florida’s idea is seen as a “message of optimism” and as a direction for future

prosperous economic development, particularly on the urban level. Florida has
put forth a new urban growth theory that contends we can anticipate successful
economic development in those cities or regions where the “creative class”

members prefer to live and where they are concentrated; as a result, we should
make cities and regions particularly appealing for this stratum of people. A good
standard of living and recreational amenities should be provided for the creative
class, according to Florida, which discusses the unique attraction elements of
cities for members of the creative class.

The new urban growth ideologies present both philosophical and political
concerns for critical urban theory. Among these urban booster ideas, the idea of
creative cities has recently risen to the top. Urban policies that support the
interests of the functional elites within neo-liberalizing capitalism are not
justifiable.

The conceptual idea of a “creative class” uses the typically positive notion of
“creativity” to conceal the dealer class’s harmful economic, political, and social
behavior. For this reason, the idea supports those who already possess the right
to the city.

References:

1. Brenner, N. (2012). Cities for People, Not for Profit Critical Urban Theory
and the Right to the City. Routledge.
2. Brenner, N. (2017). Critique of urbanization : selected essays. Bauverlag ;
Birkhäuser.
3. Jayne, M., & Ward, K. (2017). Urban theory : new critical perspectives.
Routledge.
4. Litman, T. (2022). Urban sanity. Victoria Transport Policy.

Also Watch: Urbanism Revealed

Also Read: Qualitative Research Methods in Urban Planning &

Design


 Amodini Allu

About the Author

As an amateur enthusiast, who is an Architect by day and an observer as a
whole pushes her limits to explore herself as an artist and relate her works with
Architecture. She truly believes that studying Architecture has laid her a basic
platform to try every possible thing to exhibit her works. Over the years she
developed the habit of documenting things visually and trying them pen down
as trying to decipher the spatial meaning. She also discovered a love for writing
through her works while working as an Editorial intern for an Architectural
platform. Which led her to begin a blog of her observations about usual things
happening around her through the eyes of an Architect.

 Articles, Urban theory

 Architecture, Urban Planning, Urbanism

 October 21, 2023

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