The study of cities: historical and structural approaches

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The study of cities historical and structural
approaches

• Pieter Saey

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The study of cities historical and structural
approaches

• 1. Historical and structural approaches
• structural approaches relate to the logic of a
  system
• historical approaches relate to causal chains
• 2. The real methodological problem of
  historiography
• the use of knowledge of outcomes in the
  analysis of the past
• ? how to avoid historical necessity
• 2 strategies
• investigating periods in which the outcome is
  still undetermined
• combining historical and structural approaches

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The study of cities historical and structural
approaches

• A critical analysis of the replacement of
  Christallerian ideas about central places by
  Taylorian ideas about global cities.
• Taylor has developed his ideas on the basis of a
  rejection of state-centric and afterwards
  territorial thinking.
• The background of my analysis is
• (i) the rejection of the so-called morphogenetic
  approach in the pre-positivist urban geography of
  the first half of the twentieth century
• (ii) the narrowing down of the field of
  application of central place theory.

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The study of cities historical and structural
approaches

• 3. Bobek-Christaller-Barton
• rejection of the historial approach of
  explaining the location of urban settlements by
  site and situation
• Bobek (1927) urban settlements are nodes in a
  network of flows
• Christaller (1933) (spatial) structure
• Barton (1978) agency (entrepreneurs)
• 2 kinds of centrality
• Christallerian analysis as structural approach
• 4. From B.C.B. to P.J.T.
• Hall (2002) Christaller for a global age
• ? Christallers theory, Taylors conception of
  the world city network

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The study of cities historical and structural
approaches

• 5. Pirenne-Jacobs-Taylor
• the legitimacy of the concept cities as
  transhistorical entities
• Pirenne, Jacobs city-based view of history
  with inter-city relations as the formative force
• Pirenne historical approach
• Jacobs, Taylor structural approach
• Jacobs transubstantiation
• Taylor abstraction
• 6. The structural approach structures the
  historical approach
• Determination of the unit of analysis
• Example of the archipelago of cities 1250-1350
  (Abu Lughod)

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1. Historical and structural approaches

• a structural approach relates to the logic of
  systems,
• a historical approach relates to
• (i) the examination of idiographic causal
  chains chains of causes and human purposes and
  motives, and their intended or unintended results
  and the possible generalisations or general
  historical trends that can be deduced from the
  investigation of these chains,
• (ii) the actual formation, development and
  disintegration of systems,
• e.g.
• the analysis of the world system 1250-1350 by
  Janet Abu-Lughod

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2. The real methodological problem of
historiography

• The use of knowledge of outcomes in the analysis
  of past events
• E.g. the economic and political hegemony of the
  West in modern times
• examining ex post factor of this outcome and
  then reasoning backward, to rationalize why this
  supremacy had to be
• ?
• conveys the impression that the rise of the West
  was an inherent historical necessity

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2. The real methodological problem of
historiography

• Strategies to avoid the pitfall of historical
  necessity
• 1. Abu-Lughod
• Investigation of a period in which the outcome is
  still undetermined
• 2. Combination of historical approach and
  structural approach
• - Difference between existential necessity and
  necessary existence
• - Reasoning backward is a legitimate procedure
  (retroduction or abduction)
• - Difference between structural causality and
  efficient causality

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2. The real methodological problem of
historiography

• Strategies to avoid the pitfall of historical
  necessity
• 2. Combination of structural and historical
  approaches
• In Aristotelian terms
• the structural approach should reveal formal
  causes,
• the historical approach should reveal efficient
  and final causes.
• In present-day language
• structure is causally effective, it constrains
  and enables,
• agency is causally efficient,
• human agency is intentionally causally
  efficient.

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The study of cities historical and structural
approaches

• A critical analysis of the replacement of
  Christallerian ideas about central places by
  Taylorian ideas about global cities
• to reveal the implications of the second strategy

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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton

• Bobek (1927)
• Grundfragen der Stadtgeographie (Basic questions
  of urban geography)
• Um städtische Siedlungen hervorzurufen, ist die
  Zusammenraffung, die Konzentration, die Brechung
  dieser Verkehrsfäden an gewissen Punkten nötig
• The gathering, the concentration, the breaking
  of these threads of traffic in certain points is
  necessary to bring about urban settlements.
• In present-day language
• Urban settlements come into being as nodes in
  networks of flows of traffic.

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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton

• Bobek (1927)
• Bobek reacted against the morphogenetic approach
  in urban geography
• the description of the site or topographic
  location of the urban settlement,
• the description of the situation or geographic
  location of the urban settlement,
• the historical development of the urban
  settlement insofar as it is connected to the site
  and situation
• the urban settlement as part of the broader
  landscape and as a landscape in itself.
• Bobek argued that this approach only dealt with
  superficial characteristics of urban settlements.
  If geography wanted to say more interesting
  things about urban settlements, it should focus
  on their function als lebendigen
  Wirtschafskörpers innerhalb des
  Wirtschaftsgetriebes der Landschaft as living
  economic bodies within the economic machinery of
  the landscape. Further in the article Bobek
  extended the notion of traffic to political and
  cultural communication.

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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton

• Bobek (1927)
• In dieser Ansichziehung aller früher
  ungeordeneten Verkehrsfäden, welche sich so wie
  durch die Wirkung eines Magnetpols zu einem
  radialen Netze um die städtische Siedlung
  anordnen, scheint uns das geographisches Faßbare
  und Wesentliche an städtischer Wirtschaft zu
  liegen. Den Namen Stadt können nur solche Orte
  verdienen, welche eine derartige beherrschende
  Stellung im wirtschaftlichen, kulturellen und
  politischen Verkehr eines Gebietes besitzen.
• It appears to us that the geographically
  explicable and essential aspects of the urban
  economy are to be found in this attraction of all
  formerly unordered threads of traffic that are
  organized into a radial network around the urban
  settlement as if the latter function like a
  magnetic pole. Only those places that hold such a
  controlling position in economic, cultural and
  political communications deserve the name of
  Stadt (town, city).

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3. Bobek Christaller BartonChristaller (1933)
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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton

• Bobek (1927) network of flows
• Christaller (1933) spatial structure
• Christallers theory meets the requirements of a
  scientific explanation.
• Science explains a fact when it is able to
  establish that the fact
• was possible at time T1 and place P1, but
• impossible at time T2 and place P1, and at time
  T1 and place P2.
• This definition of scientific explanation
  conveys the idea that a fact could not have
  happened in another way than it actually did,
  without being inevitable.
• The method of abstraction is at the origin of the
  methodological success of Christaller.

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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton

• Bobek (1927) network of flows
• Christaller (1933) spatial structure
• Barton (1978) agency
• The creation of centrality, AAAG
• Barton rejects the neoclassical framework in
  which the received theory of central places is
  formulated and defends an entrepreneurial/exchange
  framework based on classical economics.
• Centrality arises from the activities of the
  entrepreneur, which can be a merchant, a trader,
  a retailer, a wholesaler, a banker.

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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton
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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton

• Two kinds of centrality
• centrality generated by central functions that
  serve households (including consumer services,
  education, administration, and so on)
  (Christaller)
• process of town formation (Taylor)
• centrality generated by producer services
  (Barton)
• process of city formation (Taylor)

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3. Bobek Christaller - Barton

• Christallers theory as structural approach
• Distinction between spatial system and system of
  agents figuration
• Logic of a system the functioning of the system
  according to the rules of figuration when the
  agents act completely according to these rules
• Rules of figuration resulting in the spatial
  arrangement of central places
• - suppliers locate either as closely as
  possible to each other or as far away as
  possible from each other
• consumers patronize the nearest central place
• Rules of figuration to maintain the system of
  suppliers and consumers
• (the entire body of rules without which the
  society concerned would disintegrate)

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4. From B.C.B to P.J.T.

• Hall (2002) Christaller for a global age
• Drops the three lowest levels because the
  settlements concerned have ceased to perform any
  significant role as central places
• Adds two new levels above the L-centres the
  global cities and the sub-global cities, which he
  identifies with the alpha global cities and beta
  or gamma global cities from the
  GaWC-classification of global cities.
• ? Christallers theory
• ? Taylors conception of the world city network

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4. From B.C.B to P.J.T.
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4. From B.C.B to P.J.T.

• Connectivity of cities replaces hierarchy of
  towns
• Christaller towns servicing households in a
  hinterland
• Taylor cities as locations of producer services
  servicing a hinterworld
• Nevertheless central places
• ?
• Questions about the relation between central
  places and economic development (growth pole
  mechanisms and state intervention)
• To what degree does the key position of producer
  services entail a coordinating or even organizing
  role of these services in capital accumulation
  (global cities and commodity chains)?
• ?
• Question about the legitimacy of the notion of
  cities as transhistorical entities

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5. Pirenne-Jacobs-Taylor

• Transubstantiation
• Procedures to neutralize the importance of social
  classes
• Abstraction Man appears in the shape of Economic
  Man
• Banalization no particular role of social
  classes
• Transubstatiation Man appears in the shape of
  (Wagnerian) Ecological Man
• Conception of cities as transhistorical entities
• variant of transubstantiation (Man appears in
  the shape of Jacobsian Innovative City Man) ?

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5. Pirenne-Jacobs-Taylor

• Pirenne Medieval Cities
• History is obliged to recognize that, however
  briljant it seems in other respects, the cycle of
  Charlemagne, considered from an economic
  viewpoint, is a cycle of regression. The
  ninth century is the golden age of what we have
  called the closed domestic economy and which we
  might call, with more exactidude, the economic of
  no markets Te period which opened with the
  Carolingian era knew cities neither in the social
  sense, nor in the economic sense, nor in the
  legal sense of the word.
• The abbey-merchants were not free
  agents, but employees exclusively in the service
  of their masters. It is not apparent that any of
  them ever carried on business on his own
  account.
• European history
• Development of commerce by a strong independent
  middle class
• Creation of cities with a strong middle class

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5. Pirenne-Jacobs-Taylor

• Jacobs The economy of cities, The nature of
  economics
• World history Development of networks of cities,
  economic parentage
• The development of forces of production is
• not alternately promoted and hindered by the
  relations of production (Marx)
• not caused by the development of Mans creative
  capacities through his exploitation of the
  physical environment (Ratzel, Ecological Man)
• not caused by applying best practices of
  allocation (Economic Man)
• but caused by the victory of the innovators in a
  permanent economic conflict between innovators
  and conservatives (Innovative City Man)
• transubstantitiation

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5. Pirenne-Jacobs-Taylor

• Taylor Cities within spaces of flows, Cities and
  states
• Abstraction 1 Creating a fiction (Economic Man)
• Abstraction 2 Focusing on a selected number of
  qualities of the study object, defined at a
  certain spatiotemporal level
• Transhistorical entities
• Pirenne historical approach, same causes same
  effects
• Taylor structural approach, moral syndromes
  rules of figuration

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6. The structural approach structures the
historical approach

• Determination of the unit of analysis
• World city network as interlocking network
• Level of the network world-economy
• Nodal level cities (local networks of
  institutions)
• Sub-nodal level producer service firms
• Agency
• Firms, cities, sectors, nation-states
• Interaction causal nexuses, identity assignments

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6. The structural approach structures the
historical approach

• Determination of the unit of analysis
• World city network
• System of agents a complex of internally related
  elements defined at the appropriate level of
  spatiotemporal abstraction, Wallersteins modern
  world-system in the ongoing phase of intensified
  globalization
• Logic the functioning of the network according
  to the rules of the causal nexuses and identity
  assignments when the four agents act completely
  according to these rules
• ? Structural approach determines the causal
  chains to be investigated by the historical
  approach

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6. The structural approach structures the
historical approach

• Determination of the unit of analysis
• Abu-Lughod World system in formation 1250-1350
  (archipelago of cities)
• Transformation into an integrated world system
  has not been realized because the subsystems
  followed their own path of development to such a
  degree that the trade network was not able to
  integrate them and fragmented
• In structural terms
• The creation of a world-system failed because the
  systems to be integrated followed their own logic
  to such a degree that the trade network was not
  able to develop a logic of its own
• ? No system, no subsystems, no unit of analysis,
  no investigation of commodity chains

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6. The structural approach structures the
historical approach

• Determination of the unit of analysis
• Misleading use of terms
• The term world system, as it is currently
  used, has unfortunately been conflated with the
  particular hierarchical structure of organization
  that developed from the sixteenth century onward.
  This makes debates over world systems less than
  fruitful. It is important to remember that a
  system is simply a whole composed of parts in
  orderly arrangement according to some scheme
  (Oxford Dictionary).
• Issue is not similarity to the modern
  world-system, but
• existence of complexes of internal relations
  between agents exhibiting a logic of their own