The global economy has not always been as connected as one currently imagines. Rather, throughout the past three centuries transformational shifts have continued to network together separate parts of the globe, beginning at the local or micro-level and expanding in magnitude towards
the global, or macro-level. These connections that have actively been created within recent history are forged in a continuum of modes and forms. Whether one considers the burghers of the Late Middle Ages or unauthorized immigrants1, these studies will reveal stages within the development of global capitalism. Accompanying these studies would be a realization of the effects such new developments have in a variety of ways. Saskia Sassen’s scholarship on these same issues portray what is often invisible in the world, producing stable thought that historically situates and presents the reader with a multi-formed conception of globalization. Specifically of interest within Sassen’s scholarship are the effects these modes of capitalism have had on urbanization and the impacts they continue to proliferate in the contemporary landscape.
Questioning the terrain of the post-World War II era, Sassen contributed to the literature of globalization by examining how flows of labor immigration contribute to the development of national and global economies while simultaneously altering the urban landscape through social stratification and the spatialization of poverty. Her method consisted of tracking changes within and between national economies, heeding increases or decreases within certain sectors and examining the physical impacts of these changes, that are so often thought to be immaterial. Following her studies of labor and capital, Sassen began to study the role of cities in the global economy. Similar to her primary studies of the migration of labor and capital, her scholarship on global cities provided an assessment of these same subjects but while retaining a focused vision on their impacts within cities. Notably, the increases and decreases in labor sectors Sassen had explored in her earlier work were extended to the study of global cities and utilized to explain the distribution of labor within urban vicinities and these labor distributions’ impacts on the forms of cities. Most recently within her research, Sassen has focused on political economy throughout the pastfour centuries and its changing relationships to the national, the global, social stratification, legal rights, political sovereignty and agendas, imperialism and the growing presence of liminal digital realms.
While the level of complexity present in her current work mirrors that of her earlier studies on the immigration of labor and capital, the degree to which her commentary has grown to envelope world systems provides serious insight into the effects of globalization on urban forms. While much of her scholarship remains within the abstract realm of Gross Domestic Products measurements, immigration statistics, analysis of legal rights throughout the ages, economic sector interpretations, and critical assessments of the nation-state, the insights developed are easily tracked when read in conjunction with the recent histories of city developments around the globe. Tangibility is always a desirable characteristic and Sassen’s corpus of scholarship remains a form of knowledge that legitimates itself when specific instances are read in tandem with both recent and past case studies.
International Labor and Capital
Tracking immigrant labor flows
The changes within the global economy that took place in the 1970s and 1980s were aided by the development of new technologies. Along with a change in the process and flow of work through the use of technology came the distribution of manufacturing labor to the developing world and the transition of the developed economies’ labor force from this very manufacturing and supervisory manufacturing base to the “concentration of servicing and management functions in global cities.” (Sassen 1988:22) As office and manufacturing labor were being displaced to the developing countries of the globe, simultaneously there developed a demand for low-wage labor due to this very refiguring of the developed economies’ labor dynamic. Simply, the transition from manufacturing labor in the developed economies to servicing and management functions created a demand for low-wage laborers who would facilitate this restructuring of production. This period of economic transition is characterized by the growth of the advanced service sector (accounting,law, finance, real estate, insurance) and the downsizing of the “traditional” manufacturing industries and their replacement by a “downgraded manufacturing sector and high technology industries.” (Sassen 1988)
The effect of this transition was a disproportionate growth of high-income jobs in the service sector primarily available to those already within the developed economies and then the expansion of the informal economy through a demand for highly-specialized and labor intensive manufacturing that would be fulfilled through the immigration of labor from the developing countries of the globe. For urbanism this meant there was now a shift in growth and the concentration of power from cities like Detroit, which had previously enjoyed the benefits of a strong manufacturing industry, to cities like New York, where the failing of industry and the rise of the financial sector found a stable base from which to grow. This shifting of national economic power within the United States meant that concentrations of both highly-paid service sector jobs and low-wage jobs in the “downgraded manufacturing” (‘replacing unionized shops with sweatshops and industrial homework’ [Sassen 1988: 23]) were to be found in specific cities such as New York City, Los Angeles and Houston. This situation then presents a link between the demand for low-wage labor and the ascendancy of technology-based industries in the developed countries.
Within the internationalization of labor, its importation has followed four specific trends according to Sassen. The first type of labor importation is evident by “the association of labor imports with the expansion of the capitalist mode of production into less- or un-‘developed’ areas” (Sassen 1988: 29) This mode is typical of mining, plantations and labor-intensive manufacturing industries. Sassen provides the example of the demand for labor produced in Sri Lanka by the coffee and tea industries of the 1840s and 1850s. This demand was met by the importation of almost one million workers from southern India. This type of labor importation was also demonstrated in the Caribbean basin when the labor demand of sugar production was also met by a substantial influx of Indian immigrant workers. Generally, when industry rapidly moves into a developing country, the labor requirement for possible surplus-generating production exceeds the labor pool of that “developing” country and labor is generally imported.A second type of labor import is through capital expansion and accumulation in less-developed countries. Sassen provides the example of the rise of the oil exporting companies (OPEC) as the operation of the “production apparatus” could not take place without an influx of labor to meet the demand of the new industry. Unlike the first example, this type of labor import is not into a country entirely devoid of existing capital, but rather facilitated by such an already existing accumulation, or surplus. Rather, the labor importation is necessary for the operations of the production or industry that is being created by the host country. The third mode of labor importation is “associated with intense capital accumulation in developed countries.” (Sassen 1988: 30) A clear example of this type of importation is the demand for labor in western Europe after World War II due to reconstruction.
The last type of labor importation Sassen describes is “associated with the reproduction of capital’s dominance over labor in developed countries.” (Sassen 1988: 31) This type of labor importation was demonstrated also after World War II in Western Europe and more recently in the United States. This mode increases profits through the reduction of labor costs by the importation of low-wage workers while also functioning as a mechanism that prevents cyclical economic effects through the export of unemployment (to the home country) and the low demand of goods by the “minimal consumption levels typical among immigrants” (Sassen 1988)
These multiple modes of labor importation are not temporally situated and can at times overlap, as Sassen notes. The focus on these types of labor importation provide a framework for critically examining the role of immigrant labor in cities. These modes demonstrate historically typical organizations of bodies in urban centers, one specific example of this mentioned by Sassen is the third mode of immigrant labor mobilization that takes place in already “developed” countries with capital present. Sassen describes this specific mobilization as being exemplified by the increase in industrial “homework “that was so widely present in America’s manufacturing cities (such as Boston and New York City) in the early twentieth century. ((find images of boston and new york city garment industries, wholesale)
Urban effects
The previous section provided a vocabulary for understanding how the demands of global capital are met by transnational flows of labor to produce a surplus, or profit. The restructuring of the global economy that was taking place beginning in the 1970s and extending into the 1980s produced an array of socioeconomic conditions while enacting certain forms of urbanization. Within her study of labor and capital, Sassen focuses on New York City and Los Angeles as embodying the changes tied to flows of transnational labor. Both New York City and Los Angeles are said to retain the visible and physical aspects of these changes, though both in separate ways. Like the relationship between the growth of low-wage jobs in tandem with an increase in high-wage service/professional jobs, the changes that took place in both Los Angeles and New York City were linked immediately by the changes in labor and manufacturing that took place with the transitioning global economy.
When studying the differences between the urban effects of the global economy on New York City and Los Angeles there are striking contrasts in terms of labor supplies and manufacturing industries. In the 1970s and into the early 1980s New York City was characterized by the decline
of absolute employment from “3.7 million to 3.3 million, a 35 percent loss in manufacturing jobs, a 41 percent loss of headquarters’ jobs, and the departure of a significant share of corporate headquarters.” (Sassen 1988: 148) The physical impact of these changes are also to be understood with the decline of infrastructure and inadequate manufacturing facilities. The pre-World War II subway of New York City paired with the obsolete industrial structure of the loft-building distinguishes the state of New York City between the 1970s and 1980s. Sassen attributes these urban factors as being contributive to the lack of a recovery from the industrial collapse that had taken place. (149)
Unlike New York City but within the very same economic transition, Los Angeles provided the inverse of the urban effects previously discussed. Throughout the 1970s Los Angeles recorded amongst the highest manufacturing growth rates (Sassen) and the changes to the physical form of the city are apparent in both the post-World War II highway construction and the “sprawlingmodern factory complex that extends into the whole region and is spatially organized into different industrial centers.” (Sassen) This growth was attributed to high-technology industries such as aerospace and electronics. The increase in manufacturing due to these industries then created a high-tech core within the Los Angeles region that provided the demand for manufacturing labor, often met by “immigrant or native minority women.” (Sassen)
Both cities then exhibit distinct mileux, but within their differences Sassen found ties to the same economic process that had begun in the 1970s and extended into the 1980s. She described this process of transition through a set of characteristics. The first of these tendencies has previously
been discussed and is the increase of high-income professional and technical jobs in tandem with the expansion of low-wage service jobs. Due to the transformation of the work process by technology, a large amount of previously lower-middle income jobs were upgraded into high-income professional positions. (Sassen) Following the previous description, the same process that transformed lower-middle income jobs into upgraded high-income professional jobs downgraded a majority of jobs as labor was displaced to machines and overseas.
In addition, the reorganization of the labor process from “unionized shops to sweatshops or industrial homeworkers” combined with “changes in the industrial mix” through the decline of previously established manufacturing, such as the automobile industry in Los Angeles, impacted these two cities spatially as the requirements for industry were met both through the designation of specific facilities such as the industrial sectors in the Los Angeles region to the creation of headquarters complexes for high-technology (also known as “technoburbs”). (Sassen 1988: 150-1)
As the demise of manufacturing has been explicated in the previous descriptions of the economic transition from national to global economy, the effect of the high-income professional jobs on cities is evidenced through major growth trends in real estate and construction in both New York City and Los Angeles. In 1980 New York City’s construction activity was “up 7.1 percent between 1980 and 1981, compared with 1.2 percent nationally.” (156) According to Sassen, in 1981, office contracts awarded for construction in Manhattan were over $600 million while in 1981 they had been $700 million. In 1981 the amount of office space pre-leased in Manhattanexceeded current inventory for the third year in a row and provided an account for the 14 percent increase, between 1981 and 1982, in average rental price. (Sassen) Like New York City, Los Angeles experienced a similar demand for office space between 1972 and 1982 with the addition of smaller scale office buildings and solely in 1982 the addition of 20 million square feet of office space. The socioeconomic consequences of the changing economy of the 1970s and 1980s can be summarized as “an increased skill and income polarization in the workforce, the expansion of a downgraded manufacturing center, and the growth of an informal economy.” (Sassen 1988: 168)
At first the urban manifestations of these socioeconomic consequences may remain unclear, however picking apart each of these characteristics leads to a realization of their impact on the urban form. For example the growth of the informal economy is directly linked to the increase in high-income professionals who provide a demand for specialty goods such as “gourmet foods, the production of decorative items and luxury clothing and other personal goods, various kinds of services for cleaning, repair, errand-running, etc.” (158) Such demands that cater to high-income lifestyles are provided for by immigrant and low-wage labor that reflects both the urban composition of these lifestyles (through high-rise condos and loft living) while also exposing the correlate of low-income housing projects and the spatial segregation of the very low-wage laborers that meet these demands. These consequences also demonstrate their impact on the form of a city when the distribution of professional services such as law, accounting, real estate, finance and architecture are understood as contributing to the shape of cities through their demand for office space, as was previously mentioned relative to Manhattan, but also through capital investment through restaurants, hotels, residential buildings and banking. When these impacts are further expanded, their active engagement with shaping the city can be understood through varied processes such as the specialized services that are utilized in running hotels and high-income residential buildings. These services could include high-end shopping districts (the development of West Second Street in Austin for example) or business districts that provide supplies for the specialty services of law, accounting, real estate, etc.Understanding global cities
Concentrations of the global
Perhaps the scholarship of Sassen is best known for its delineation of global importance through an urban hierarchy. Deemed “global cities”, this hierarchy examines the previously mentioned flows of labor and manufacturing while simultaneously focusing on concentrations of producer services within specific cities throughout the globe. Further, this hierarchy ranks cities in accordance to relation with one another. It is not only a simple measuring process that examines pure concentrations of producer services, but rather, the relationship amongst these cities is examined to explain their global importance. This project is also aided by the realization the “the period of massive growth of consumer services is associated with the expansion of mass production in manufacturing.” (Sassen 1991: 327) Within the global cities hierarchy then, the relationship of each city’s role has been produced through the transformation of the global economy (as has previously been discussed) where developed countries upgraded many jobs to high-income service-based employment while simultaneously downgrading many jobs to low-wage, low-skills manufacturing that is either displaced to the developing countries of the globe or employ immigrants in the developed world. In addition, the growth of the service industry relies upon further service inputs (such as office supplies, equipment) that contribute to the continued shift towards a service-based economy in the developed world.
Paramount within the global cities hierarchy is making clear that the shift to a service-based economy in the developed world was not independent of manufacturing but rather manufacturing now takes place in the developing world, with certain cities through the developed globe operating as command and control centers for these manufacturing processes. This notion, that certain cities become command and control centers or headquarters provides a clear explanation for the growth of producer services and their effects on urban form. While manufacturing still operates within the global economy at a high level, the previous spatial limitations that had once organized cities according to proximity to natural resources (such as rivers for mills and transportation) and the services of a downtown or central business district are now removed through the implementation of telecommunications that provide a stable base for many of the processes that used to rely on proximity for operation. This is not to say that downtowns and central business districts have been eliminated or will be, but rather that the previous modes of conducting business have been reoriented with the introduction of telecommunications technologies that allow for everyday business transactions such as monitoring and supervision to be enacted from afar, this contributes to the displacement of manufacturing to developing countries where labor is cheaper while also giving rise to the service-based economy that allows for the operation of these newly enacted, technologically enabled business practices. “The management and servicing of a global network of factories, service outlets, and financial markets imposes specific forms on the spatial organization in these cities.” (328) The specific forms this global network gives rise to include high density urbanization due to the necessity of proximal specialized services (such as law, accounting, public relations) and high agglomeration economies that are exhibited through the high cost and competition for land prices and the rapid construction of high-rise office buildings. These spatial forms are the effects of the transition from an economy based on manufacturing present in the “developed” world to the shift into a focus on command and control of manufacturing in the “developing” world and the role of finance in these operations. Simply, with the economic transition that has been previously described, “developed”
countries have shifted to fulfilling a role of monitoring manufacturing operations overseas, essentially partaking in the service industry through high-wage employment in sectors like law, accounting, real estate, finance and insurance.
“Through finance more than through other international flows, a global hierarchy of cities has emerged, with New York, London, and Tokyo,” (327) As briefly discussed above, the changes to the world economy have contributed to a shift in the functions of certain cities throughout the globe. As Sassen makes evident, these new cities do not exist so much on a continuum as in a network of concentrated forms of power. Interestingly, for the analysis presented in Globalization and its discontents, the form of power which Sassen emphasizes as contributing to a city’s placement within the hierarchy is the amount of finance that moves within its limits. The triad of New York City, London and Tokyo act as a “marketplace” for global capital, connecting foreign investors through the New York Stock Exchange, and similar institutions within London and Tokyo. In the 1980s these three cities also performed specific roles within a “transterritorial marketplace” with Tokyo becoming the main provider of global capital, London acting as a processing center and national banking network, and finally, New York City acting as the site of most foreign/global capital investment. (327)
Common to these three cities are not only an inordinate amount of global trade and finance but the social inequalities that were previously described in the discussion of immigrant labor. As the shift to a service-based economy has depended upon the displacement of manufacturing,
the ascendancy of many middle class jobs to high-income professional jobs and the inverse of this ascendancy, the increase in a large amount of low-wage jobs that service the new lifestyles created by the service-based economy, increased class polarization has become more apparent. This polarization takes form as the entities that provide for the necessary functioning of firms in the new urban industrial core must struggle to retain low production costs which is done through the employment of undocumented workers in sub-standard conditions for sub-standard wages or a raise in production costs which contributes to the rise of land prices. Of particular interest is the employment of undocumented workers as they increasingly find difficulty living in these cities. The relationship is direct, the formal sector contributes to the demand for low-wage workers which are met through immigrant or undocumented labor. Then, this expanding low-wage labor force, that is required by the formal sector for its operations, finds it increasingly difficult to live in cities whose land prices continue to rise and the cost of living follows.
With the growth of the high-income professional class and the low-wage labor class the form of cities begins to reflect the demands of these lifestyles. The change in the socioeconomic organization
of the global cities is made apparent in the structuring of sites of consumption that are available to the high-income professional class and actively contribute to supplying and shaping their lifestyles. These changes are demonstrated through high-income gentrification in cities, luxury consumption, a cosmopolitan work culture and the expansion of the art market. Sassen notes that the growth of this professional class results in a type of self-exploitation where the individuals (such as brokers, lawyers, accountants) are involved in a system that demands of them long working hours to generate immense profits of which they see a disproportionate return in their high, but relatively low, salaries. This relationship is realized in city form through sites of luxury consumption, real estate and the other types mentioned above. The income of the new professional class is higher than the previous middle-class income, though not large enough to be investment capital. The result of this situation, Sassen argues, is that this new class can be characterized by specific consumption choices related to luxury goods and intermediate investments such as the arts and antiques. In urban form these sites may be understood as specialized shopping districts, cultural centers, art galleries, antique shops and warehouse lofts. This can be further described as a new consumption pattern characterized by specific tastes, “not just of food but of cuisine, not just of clothes but of designer labels, not just of decoration but of authentic objets d’art.” (335)
A correlate to this change in consumption patterns enacted through the form of the city is found in a “low-cost equivalent of gentrification” by immigrants of rundown sectors of the city. The influx of immigrants, tied to labor demand, could in the 1980s be seen to alter the physical environment of global cities like New York and London through the revitalization of abandoned buildings and neighborhoods. The social and cultural practices of this immigrant influx then creates a demand for new types of goods and services for daily life which contributes to the regeneration of these sectors within the city. “Small investments of money and direct labor in homes and shops by individuals become neighborhood upgrading because of the residential concentration of immigrants.” (336) The spatial distribution of these immigrant workers then provides the opportunity for neighborhood renewal through a process of small improvements to the built form and the growth of local economies.
Sennett and the Decline of Modern Life
The work of Richard Sennett embraces an historical approach to understanding citiesthat focuses on how the social has impacted the way cities are understood and constructed. As a sociologist, his emphasis on the role of the social in these changes is not surprising however his insight is valuable for it combines a series of trajectories for interpretation. His ideas are not solely housed within sociological theory, and much like Sassen, the many trajectories of his inquiries produces a complex understanding of what cities have meant and what they might come to mean for those living within them. Beginning in the 1970s, Sennett focused on how the increasing homogeneity of social classes and interactions in urban spaces contributed to a shift in psycho-social relations. In The Uses of Disorder, he argues that through lack of every day altercations and general social mixing, Western society was experiencing a type of perpetual adolescence or delayed adulthood since the processes that contribute to the formation of an active social life were being refigured. This thought was extended into his book The Fall of Public Man, though within this specific scholarship he increases his attention on the historical roots of this shift in society and argues for an understanding of these changes within the framework of theater. Between these two works there is a clear link as Sennett examines how social relations in cities have contributed to the symbolic perceptions of cities throughout the past two centuries, and further, the way these connections are enacted in specific circumstances such as social mores, cultural practices, political life and the built form.
His analysis shares with Sassen an exploration of political economy throughout the past two centuries, and especially in The Fall of Public Man this becomes apparent as he attempts to link the production abilities of the Industrial Revolution its social effects, or broadly stated the social, cultural and political environments enabled by Industrial Capitalism. The role of technology in this interpretation of city life is influential as it was in Sassen’s writing because he makes a link between the specifically technologically-enabled mode of industrial production with changing social and cultural practices within the markets of the city. Not only do these practices change according to him, for example from small shops with individually or artisan-crafted products where dialogue was necessary between shopper and storekeeper to Industrial Capitalism which effectively
eliminated this dialogue through the rhetoric of scarcity and bulk value where prices couldno longer be bartered over and shops’ physical and social layouts were adapted to this scenario. Sennett is able to describe a series of situations such as the changing practices within shops which indicate the refiguring of social, cultural and political relations.
As The Fall of Public Man may be arguably an extension of his earlier work, it is of value to also situate The Uses of Disorder within an historical framework. Published in 1970 the scholarship is tinted by the antiwar movement and Sennett links together the disruptions, or actually the lack of such events, to the homogenization of urban spaces. Written twenty or so years after the “white flight” from cities to suburbs in post-war America, the ideas proposed by Sennett attempt to disentangle how arguably racist practices of social and ethnic segregation are symptoms of a government too interests in imperialism and ignoring its responsibilities to its citizens to provide for the common welfare, in its various forms. I would argue that “welfare” should not denote the typical idea of the “welfare state” and its extensive state services, but rather, welfare in the general sense of health, happiness and fortune. For within The Uses of Disorder, much of what is analyzed focuses on how the homogeneity effectively organizing cities of the 1960s-1970s is having extremely negative consequences for individuals in all social groups. It is not only that those without the capital to leave the inner city are suffering, but that those abandoning urban life are insulating themselves inside a calm, or even lucid, social milieu where the intrusions of the unexpected are lacking. And due to this lack of interruptions in every day social life, individuals are not fully developing as social actors, rather they are perpetually placed in a stage of adolescence.
In the analysis that follows I briefly explore more in-depth how Sennett argues for these relationships between political economy, social life and cities. When read in tandem with Sassen’s scholarship, one might notice varying degrees of similarity as they both focus on economic systems at times while also providing social and cultural commentary. It is essential though to understand that historical consequences of their environments, as they are both writing in similar situations as the restructuring of the world economy was taking place and producing its impacts in all areas of American life. These impacts are still with us today, from the cliché suburban teenage angst to the everyman of the corporate officetower, filled with a strict grid of cubicles and its repression ofexpression. Developments such as suburbs, the post-World War II interstate highway system, new technologies and economic restructuring are key components for producing a legible and situated understanding of both Sassen’s and Sennett’s arguments. Some art critics have argued that the career of the Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was greatly aided by his wife, whose own paintings are said to reflect a “cleaning up” of his very own work and whose very own career may have been sacrificed to enable Jackson to achieve fame within the New York art world. But any similar reading of Sennett and Sassen such as this would be unable to account for the complexity of their individual scholarship and the utility of a joint reading. While they both, at times, focus on the same issues, it is never through a lens of supplementing one another nor picking up where the other left off. Rather, together their work provides serious insight into how the complexity of cities can be disentangled at certain knots, though this process is more like a game of cat’s cradle with one knot replacing another throughout interpretation.
Social Consequences of Industrial Capitalism
The changes to production briefly outlined above during the Industrial Revolution effected a series of changes, to say the least, within city life. For Sennett these changes are both at the molar level and the molecular level. They are entangled in the economic system while also effecting
the personal, or molar scale of life. These changes could hastily be said to have produced an emphasis on impersonality in public that is a logic consequence of the shift to Industrial Capitalism. This framework in its most basic sense is centered around the integration of technology into the means of production, allowing for the displacement of labor to machines while also contributing to the high production rates of commodities. Preceding this mode of production, commodities were produced individually and by craftsman, relatively scarce or at least not as plentiful as they are now today, these objects would then enter a market that relied upon social interactions to debate pricing and qualities of the object in-itself. Sennett argues, through a marxist lens, that with the introduction of commodity fetishism, where these objects enter the market and become the signifier or receptacle of social values reflecting the distribution of power, social life in citiesdeviated towards a lack of interactions where fixed pricing and the rhetoric of scarcity compound to enforce a new phenomenological experience in the market. Most simply, with the abilities of mass production social relations within the shop, or market, came to a new type of territory where there was a lack of interaction due to a fixed pricing system and a rhetoric of scarcity in abundance.
This is a marked change as he writes, “the 18th Century urban market was unlike its late Medieval or Renaissance predecessors; it was internally competitive, those selling in it vying for the attention of a shifting and largely unknown group of buyers.” (Sennett 1977: 18) This “vying for attention” and “competition” reflects upon the interactions necessary of that market for coherence, which came to be replaced with the rise of Industrial Capitalism. Important for understanding this change within the market is also situating the rise of a developing class within Industrial Capitalism, the bourgeoisie. Sennett has noted that, “the new trade activity in the 18th Century capitals was not added onto what had been there before; the whole economic structure of the city recrystallized around it.” (57) Essentially this argument holds that with the rise of the bourgeoisie, and more explicitly Industrial Capitalism, the entire form of cities came to reflect these changes within the structure of the economy since until the realization of this stage of Capitalism, the form of the city had remained unchanged and only later came to accommodate this specific mode of production. The form then began to reflect such redevelopment through the growth of industrial processing and manufacturing situated in downtown city centers with its attendant consequences such as tenement housing, transit lines for workers and proximity due to lack of telecommunications. This is of course a generalization by Sennett and the impact on development that this specific stage of Capitalism had on cities is not always linear necessarily, however his argument for the socially-reflective changes of this mode are worth interpretation.
With these specific changes to production in mind, Sennett examines how ideas of public and private impacted city life by discussing the presentation of emotion and later, the representation of emotion. Victorian ideals about the body, the human and the psyche are reflected in these thoughts and stem from Enlightenment thinking. Specifically of interest is how the rise of theBourgeoisie is networked to the changing ideas about the division between “public” and “private.” To quote Sennett again, “The private realm was to check the public in terms of how far conventional, arbitrary codes of expression could control the whole of a person’s sense of reality; beyond these borders he had a life, a form of expressing himself, and a set of rights which no convention could obliterate by fiat. But the public realm was a corrective to the private realm as well; natural man was an animal; the public therefore corrected a deficiency of nature which a life conducted
according to the codes of family love alone would produce: this deficiency was incivility.” (91) This “incivility” then comes to be associated with the “private”, this thought retains the notion of a type of primitiveness in man which society acts as a corrective to. While there are various impacts of this specific train of thought, within the city it came to be understood within a framework of theater, or at least of performativity. The “public” realm became a site of civilizing where the human could engage with other social actors to become like them, to shed the innate human qualities that were discouraged within Victorian society and assimilate into a specific scheme of acting, presentation, representation and interpretation. Largely though the lens for interpreting what these social acts meant was read through a focus on the individual personality as it came to be manifest in this system. The “face” one would wear in public was to dictate who they were as a person and this was largely done through the representation of emotion. This is a clear shift from the Ancien Régime where social rank or social order manifested itself as the public experience. With this shift to representation of emotion, actuality and authenticity were lost in social relations as emphasis was placed on displaying one’s “true feelings”, forcing a type of authenticity that was arbitrarily understood within the social.
The formal manifestation of such a process, argues Sennett, was seen in “the monumental squares of the early 18th century, in restructuring the massing of population in the city, restructured the function of the crowd as well, for it changed the freedom with which people might congregate. The assemblage of a crowd became a specialized activity; it occurred in three places — the café, the pedestrian park, and the theater.” (54) Here the formal consequences of such changes in social and economic relations are provided in a clear fashion, though one might argue againstsuch an economically driven reading and instead stress the complexity of the situation. Taking for example Hausmann’s Paris, while the market was of specific concern within the construction of the grand boulevards, so to were displays and deployments of military power. Though Sennett focuses on an economically drive interpretation, there are ways of re-reading his text, for example questioning the role of imperialism in the structuring of cities. This is not to argue that utilizing the economic as a lens is flawed, however, the formal consequences are manifestations of much more complex processes that examine notions such as the “Nation”, the “State”, proximity and immigration. However this initial example of café, pedestrian parks and the theater serves to illustrate how a shift in the concept of the “public” was tied to cities’ form while also a reflection of the ideas surrounding what a city might be, for example the control center of an empire or even the finance sector of a growing system. “From successful acting Diderot moves to a theory of emotion as presentation. The feelings an actor arouses have form and therefore meaning in themselves, just as a mathematical formula has meaning of its own no matter who writes it. For this expression to occur, men must behave unnaturally, and search for what convention, what formula can be repeated, time after time.” (113) Arguably, the changing societies of the 19th and 20th Centuries moved from an authentic experience of social life into what Sennett argues is a false representation of an imagined authenticity. This thought remains grounded in the environmental characteristics discussed above, but key for its understanding is that social life became an algorithm, or a program that individuals followed in accordance with a specific set of regulation. In Capitalism and Schizophrenia Deleuze and Guattari discuss a concept named “faciality”, which I would argue is a nearly direct expression
of what Sennett is describing.(Deleuze 185) For Deleuze and Guattari “faciality” can be thought of as a grid of identity on which every social actor is situated. Individual characteristics are here ignored and there is instead an emphasis on totality such as “white”, “man”, “Christian” and other emblematic traits of dominant Western society. Reading between this concept of “faciality” and the thought proposed by Sennett I would argue that Sennett introduces the notion of an alteration to this grid of identity. Previously, with the Ancien Régime, faciality would haveconsisted of the King or Queen as the social body and the “public” is the non-personal expression of these two individuals within the Kingdom. The design of cities reflected this notion through an emphasis on courtly processions and events where faciality was composed through categories associated with the Royal. In this situation, individuals outside faciality, notably most of the kingdom, were not entangled into the social in quite the same mode as Sennett outlines since the existing thought of faciality was situated around royalty and the grid may be argued to have been less structured. However with the rise of the new bourgeoisie and the exchange of power between the royalty and this new merchant class, came to the solidifying of the grid of faciality. No longer were individuals as expressive as before, but rather, through the development of specific social mores, attention to the individual, or the personal, was now emphasized and through this emphasis the core, or authenticity, Sennett argues, was abandoned.
This argument by Sennett then attempts to link the changes within social relations as tied to the form of cities, effectively controlled through the requirements of the market. This is of course a simplification of his ideas as they are enmeshed with changes in 19th and 20th Century theater. But this thought provides serious insight into how the complexity of cities needs to be read through multiple lenses to establish any clear sight. Of specific interest are the formal consequences provided, the café, the pedestrian sidewalks and the theater. Cultural forms such as the fine arts may lend for reference here to portray the varied effects that changes to the form of a city have on the idea of a city. Taking Paris as an example again, with the introduction of the grand boulevards (pedestrian sidewalks) came the introduction of cafés where a mixture of social classes gathered. These cafés serve today even as a template from which many designers wish to enable a type of cosmopolitanism linked to the very qualities present in 19th and 20th century such as artistic creativity, social life and social mixing. The Impressionists themselves are clear examples of how ideas of the city have been impacted by these changes. This movement within painting often portrayed the new signs of social and cultural life such as these cafés and theaters, producing a legible template for interpreting social and class relations throughout the reformatting of cities. It is also worth stating that this movement is strongly correlated to new developments incity form as the everyday aspects of city life had not always been portrayed in painting. This shift in content also reflects the rise of the bourgeoisie as painting became an entity moving outside the traditional restraints of the academy. This was enabled through the movement of capital throughout the merchant class to support individual artists pursuing new content and means of expression in painting, that had ostracized them from the academy and were vital components in their denial for admission to these very same academies. While this focus is missing from Sennett’s exploration of public life, it acts as a supplement to his understanding of how cities and city life came to be portrayed. A wide range of topics were covered in much of the Expressionist movement, from the social life within the new cafés and bars, to prostitution and the experience of anomie in the new industrial city.
While Industrial Capitalism and the bourgeoisie came to signify specific social arrangements and identities, above I have equated this with faciality, there were clearly cultural forms such as painting and literature which work against Sennett’s reading of this warping of the grid. Through the portrayal of café life and bedroom scenes after sexual relations with prostitutes, the Impressionists conveyed a new idea of the city and this idea was specifically enabled through the complex processes discussed above. The argument for a stressed personality leading to superficiality due to representation of emotions rather than presentation is useful though in understanding how the ideas in The Fall of Public Man are extensions of the ideas presented in The Uses of Disorder. Written in 1970, The Uses of Disorder was a critical account of then-current life in cities with the consolidation of minority ethnic groups within urban settings and the suburbanization of the white middle class. Homogeneity is key in understanding this scholarship by Sennett as he attributes the lack of social interactions and interruptions as imposing a perpetual adolescence on the individual in society.
“If the permeability of cites’ neighborhoods were increased, through zoning changes and the need to share power across comfortable ethnic lines, I believe that working-class families would become more comfortable with people unlike themselves.” (Sennett 1970: 194) Here is proposed the idea that heterogeneity must be introduced into a city’s various forms, both physicaland social, so that a certain degree of mixing will occur. The argument is in direct opposition to the isolation of specific class and ethnic enclaves throughout cities and suburbs where homogeneity reigns and lack of interaction negatively affects the individual psyche. The focus on psycho-social qualities of cities then presents a lens of viewing the urban as a complex interrelationship of systems such as the psychic, the social and the economic. For within this scholarship Sennett does not place as much emphasis on historical change linked to the mode of production and the role of the market, rather this is implicit in the “problems” he sees as the ability for these ethnically- and class-distinct enclaves to form since it was situated in the milieu of the post-World War II manufacturing
economy in America. “When conflict is permitted in the public sphere, when the bureaucratic routines becomes socialized, the product of the disorder will be a greater sensitivity in public life to the problems of connecting public services to the urban clientele.” (198)
Synthesizing thoughts
There is then an interesting connection that may be made between Sassen’s scholarship and Sennet’s in that Sassen has been directly interested in how a shift from Fordist manufacturing principles (present during this post-World War II growth) and Keynesian economics to the post-industrial landscape of displaced manufacturing and command/control centers affects the form and idea of cities today. Combining the analysis by both scholars renders a method for approaching cities both through a material and semiotic understanding. The strength of this method is that the physical surroundings and conditions, such as the actual form of the city and even the means of production, are able to be understood in conjunction with the semiotic components of these very same processes. For if anything, this process allows for a delineation that provides a path to follow in understanding cities where processes like economic cycles, labor immigration and the physical movement through cities via public transit is situated within a global and local framework that legitimates both terms while making clear their relationality and co-involvement. Further, in stressing a semiotic approach to interpreting cities the material methodology is supplemented by investigating topics such as Sennett has. How do social relations change over time incities, and how do these social relations impact an understanding of these cities? Even further, how have the material conditions contributed to these social changes and been co-involved with their becoming? These inquiries are best answered through allowing for the complexity of cities to be developed in accounts of urban situations, rather than attempting to identify one meta-narrative, such as Capitalism, that drives or produces these changes.
Whether Western society has truly experienced a dismissal of true public life, or if Sennett is truly fetishizing the class distinctions present in the Ancien Régime is irrelevant for acknowledging how his scholarship appropriates several fields to portray life in urban situations. Following this, Sassen’s arguments are a bit more implicitly encoded in her scholarship and not always so self-evident though she is also clearly concerned with the impact Capitalism and class have on cities both near and far. Whether their ideas initiate radical change in the built form will remain unclear for several decades, but their ideas have radically changed the ideas of cities. If anything they introduce, when read in tandem, cities as nodes within a relational network that is physically and ideally displaced while situated. The command and control centers in Silicon Valley link up with the production centers in New Dehli, all of which is financed through New York City, to which investment capital has come from Tokyo or London.(Martin) This network makes clear the implicit proximity between cities across the globe, connected through the global market and destabilizing many of the boundaries of the 20th Century such as the Nation, the State, mobility, communication and cultural barriers. The further extension of this thought is then to realize that these new material conditions have specific impacts on urban forms and the ideas about what it means to be a city. For example, the distribution of bodies throughout a city may at times reflect clear social patterns where class and ethnicity are segregated in enclaves, as discussed by Sennett. This also extends into understanding poverty in cities since at many times the global demand for labor will bring a high volume of immigrant laborers that then establish slums.
From their combined analysis I would argue that in understanding cities’ forms and ideas it is essential to work towards complexity. There have been many philosophical strands in the twentieth century that have relied on a type of pluralism in understanding the world, and this maybe an essential start to improving how cities are understood and designed. When relationality is stressed one is also able to discover often overlooked connections in the vast global network, this is, I feel, a strength of Sennett’s analysis and can be supplemented by the understanding of larger social processes that Sassen provides. Within each scholar’s work is an inherent hopefulness that the complexity of cities might be mitigated through a combination of analyses in varied fields to alleviate issues such as poverty, discrimination and social degradation. How one goes about designing solutions to these issues is not a problem addressed by either writer and might instigate the question of whether these issues are solely able to be resolved through design. I would argue it is not, and many of the Modernist planning projects could arguably attest to this. Rather, I think that Sassen and Sennett urge a combinatory approach to finding solutions that integrates design, policy analysis, planning, environmental management and a series of other fields. They both clearly present cities through complexity, urging this as a method for further inquiry.
