Pushing the limits of urban research: Urbanization, pipelines and counter-colonial politics

Abstract

This article confronts debates about extended and concentrated urbanization with Indigenous claims to time and space. It does so in part by discussing the degree to which notions of extended and concentrated urbanization allow us to understand the dynamics of pipeline politics in Canada, notably Indigenous claims leveled at infrastructure projects. It argues that Lefebvre-inspired research is both promising and insufficient in this regard. Their promises can only be realized provided one considers urban research as mediation (between everyday life and the social order), contextualize urbanization as a product of non-linear histories through which ‘city’ and ‘non-city’ are transformed or reinstituted as socio-spatial forms, and take seriously imaginaries that may not only contest but also refuse the expansion of the urban field. Meeting these conditions is not possible without resorting to other, non-Lefebvrean approaches that help us understand the settler-colonial aspects of Canadian urban history and grasp the inter-national dimensions of Indigenous politics. Finally, opening up Lefebvre scholarship to considerations of settler colonialism is impossible without the distinct relational theories of time and space that inform radical Indigenous theories (and some pipeline struggles). Indigenous claims in or against urbanization thus represent a limit case of urban research.

Journeys through planetary urbanization: Decentering perspectives on the urban

“…This is particularly true if we try to apply the three-dimensional conceptualization of the urban (as centrality, mediation and difference) to the analysis of territories of extended urbanization. Notably, Kipfer (2018) as well as Monte-Mór (2014) and Castriota and Tonucci (2018) clearly demonstrated in their analyses that these concepts, particularly the concept of the urban level, can in fact be productively used for the analysis of such territories. However, a range of pressing questions remains open: How can the urban level be identified in the complex, networked, multilayered, and multi-scalar extended urban landscapes that are emerging around the globe?…”

“…She came to the conclusion that such places allow us to think about the urban as an incomplete and contingent process as well as an “undecidable category.” I cannot discuss Roy’s inspiring study here in detail, but I would like to stress the importance of her exploration of the urban beyond the classical definitions of agglomerations. In a similar move, Kipfer (2018) followed indigenous and allied resistance against the construction of pipelines across Canada in the province Alberta connecting a tar sand extraction site to global markets. Kipfer’s provocative question “Is this pipeline urban?” led him to analyze a complex situation in which many indigenous peoples led their lives in trans-local fashion, in and between reserves and off-reserve places of work, residence, and activism.…”

“…Notably, however, in The Urban Revolution , published only two years after his earlier formulation of the right to the city, Lefebvre explicitly rejected the concept of the “city” as the central basis for an understanding of the urban—he even called it a “pseudo-concept” and an ideology (Lefebvre, 2003 [1970]; Schmid, 2012). Instead, Lefebvre developed the idea of the urban as a “level” ( niveau ) of social reality, which mediates between the general ( global ) level (the realm of capital and the state) and the private level (everyday life) (Goonewardena, 2005; Kipfer, 2009; Kipfer, 2018). Subsequently, in The Production of Space , from a more general perspective, Lefebvre introduced the terms difference, differential space and right to difference into his theorization (see also Lefebvre, 1970).…”

Emerging urban spaces: a planetary perspective

“…Equally, the critical reflection of planetary urbanization is deeply acknowledged in chapter eight, where Nancy Couling reveals how ocean spaces unfold new urban formats resulting in channels of infrastructure delivery energy, waste, goods that cross oceans, with a focus on Barents and Baltic Seas. The analysis literally pushes the limits of urban research (Kipfer 2018) by offering a spatial composition of the urbanization of the ocean, seen as a planetary system of vessels, shipping routes, harbors and pipelines that raise a diverse format of the urban. This strand is completed by an insight in the extensive urbanization process of the Eastern Amazon (chapter nine) that illustrates how a comprehensive understanding of contemporary urbanization of the nature may shed light on the key role played by human agency, in a coexistence of urban and natural that harmonize relationship with the nature through new 'emancipatory' forms of urban citizenships.…”

“Regulatory capture” and “extractive hegemony”: the relevance of Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the state to contemporary environmental politics in Canada

“…A key tactic for both the climate justice and Indigenous sovereignty movements is resistance to the construction of new infrastructure necessary for the expansion of the Alberta oil patch (Estes, 2019; Grossman, 2019; Haluza-Delay and Carter, 2016; Kipfer, 2018; Smith, 2015). Alliances of Indigenous and climate activists have engaged in multiple forms of resistance to tar sands pipelines in recent years.…”