The review of the book “Seeing Like a City” by Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift
Cities — how should they be seeing in the contemporary context? A unique approach, not based on the established narratives of the Critical Urban Theory, is given in the book “Seeing Like a City” by Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift. Ash Amin is a head of Department of Geography at University of Cambridge. He is currently associate editor of the “City” journal.
Nigel Thrift is a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick and is a British academic and geographer.
“Seeing Like a City” was published in 2017 and it is a peculiar reading. Amin and Thrift advance their ideas in seven sections.
The core argument of the book is: “the infrastructure of the modern city can become the main focus of the political action” (12).
In other words, Amin and Thirft argue in favour of urban politics of fair access to infrastructure. Because today infrastructure plays vital role in term of urban life, and having power over infrastructure means to have control over people (13). Then Amin and Thrift are developing their ideas on what is city and how to examine it with deeper approach.
Below I describe the main parts in more detail, and also provide some critical views of this work.
In the first chapter “Looking through the city” Amin and Thirft stress that in order to understand the whole complexity of cities we need to rethink the fundamentals of core disciplines and social sciences, because cities are more than just “territorial formation”, they include combinatorial practices and their complex interplays (15).
The authors consider city as an “complex assemblage”, which is defined as
“things, massed together, that furnish the world through closely juxtaposed or interwoven concentrations of humans, technologies and infrastructures. (…) overlapping sociotechnical systems. More than just spatial concentration is involved” (9).
Such approach is closely related to the Actor–Network Theory, described in the article “The politics of urban assemblages”. The main concept on the theory is that everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level and influence on each other, (Farias, 2011).
Amin and Thirft also emphasis, that today’s politics of the governing do not correspond the tendencies in which cities are developing, because national authorities usually remain blind to urban centrality, while municipal authorities have much less power to influence on complex urban issues (19).
The authors suggest that there should be another approach on city management, mainly based on the greater public involvement (29–30).
The second chapter “Shifting the Beginning” says, that cities are “infrastructural entanglements” and “one of the main products and producers of the Anthropocene”. They describe Anthropocene as geological epoch, during which the earth was reshaped by human force on a significant scale. The greatest changes of the epoch have been made through the infrastructure, which importance for cities might be perceived as the analogue of human breathing system (38–40).
The impact which industrial revolution has on the planet could be compared with “meteorite strike”. Humanity influence the nature in a very brutal way causing mass extinction of living beings. However, the key factor on the nature environment from Anthropocene is the availability and ease of movement, hastened by infrastructure (49).
Now we can watch the “second nature” of roads, buildings, planes, etc. And all these entities exist in a constant motion. Moreover, micro computational sensing and data-processing possibilities created a “third nature”, which allows transportation of the information and culture around the globe, that was previously unthinkable (55–56).
It makes me think, that by placing such a great responsibility on infrastructure, we are putting ourselves at great risk, since technologies are quite unstable and vulnerable. In the book “Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails” there are many examples provided of how destroying infrastructure can dreadfully affect people’s lives (Graham, Marvin, 2009).
Furthermore, Amin and Thirft invites readers to think how human and non-human means influence our life, and how management policy should work under the challenges of Anthropocene (67).
To explain urban social attitudes and affects, in the third chapter “How Cities Think”, the authors re-examine the concept and role of a human as a spatial product,
“human in a broader way, as a composite of technical and earthy powers” (72).
Amin and Thirft also discuss the ability of cities to think. This concept is evaluated in the context of developing information technologies, when a huge number of sensors are installed in the city and produce big data, collecting and analyzing it — all these processes are parts of the city’s thinking, among which there are human beings (85). Thus, the authors ask the question: How can a person interact and thrive in a complex of relationships that are inherently extra-human?
As an answer, there are six approaches provided to find a practical solution (85–93). However, many of them are very widely formulated. For example, “redesign democracy institutions” or “develop a new vision of the world (…) which give all things a constituency”. Such suggestions are hard for practical implementation.
In addition, Amin and Thirft notice that the urban world is increasing in scale and changing its spectrum, and in the minds of many, going beyond the boundaries of the real and flowing into fantastic forms. This once again underlines the constant movement and development of the technological components of cities.
In the fourth chapter “The Matter of Economy”, the authors analyze cities as engines of socio-economic growth. The authors highlights, that the state of the world’s population, concentrated in cities, depends on their production and distribution capacity. It is also believed that the character of cities influences the “successes and failures of an economy”, not only independent economy processes (100).
At the same time, the authors focus more on the supply infrastructure — urban equipment. Amin and Thirft emphasize that the quality of work on the repair and maintenance of infrastructure systems is extremely important, because this will inevitably affect smaller economic entities. In addition, they describe the importance of ensuring that the equality of services in the city is “designed into ethical, technological and logical” levels (104).
The authors say, that the urban economy is a complex system consisting of multiple, heterogeneous economic transactions and organizations. This diversity is the engine, on the one hand, of well-being, and on the other, as it shown in Chapter 5, of poverty in the city (114).
In the fifth chapter “Frames of Poverty”, Amin and Thirft continue to examine cities’ economy, but from the point of the poorness. It is described how infrastructure is a system of differences in relation to urban poverty and methods of its mitigation.
The authors argue that there is no consensus on what the overall trend of urban poverty is (125). There are different ways of assessing poverty indicators (“Logics of Calculation”).
Although, mathematical assessments may turn out to be completely unfair for specific cases. Therefore, it is also necessary to draw an analogy with experience (“Logics of Experience”). Authors provide dominate narratives in describing poverty from experience.
Also, the relationship between poverty and infrastructure is addressed in the book “Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia”. In the chapter “Urbanization and Ubiquity” it is emphasized, that the development of technology can lead to an increase in the gap between the wealthy and the poor (Townsend, 2014).
Critics
The book has been widely and enthusiastically reviewed and has stimulated discussing the ideas that Amin and Thirft advances in the text.
For example, Robert Beauregard, professor of urban planning in the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, has published a devastating review on the book, where he disagreed almost with everything that Amin and Thirft wrote about.
Firstly, Beauregard says, that the biggest part of the world remains stable for centuries and, thus, Amin and Thirft’s concept of “constantly shifting networks of relationships” (Chapter 1) is not relevant.
Secondly, “the marginalisation of nature”. Professor Beauregard stresses that large part of infrastructure has been developed to address nature, but in his perception, Amin and Thirft’s city is just infrastructure-human interaction.
And finally, Robert Beauregard describe the importance of “human associations” in the city life, while in the book, cities, instead of being analyzed in terms of interaction with many assemblage’s actors, described only over infrastructure.
In the end of his review, Beauregard wrote that “Seeing Like a City” is
“not a book for the faint-hearted”,
because it offers no reassurance of theories provided in it (Beauregard, 2018).
In contrast, Michele Lancione, an urban geographer and ethnographer, and Prathiwi Widyatmi Putri, doctor of engineering science and planning and development, wrote pretty positive reviews. They both note, that “Seeing Like a City” provides a fresh perspective on urban theory (Putri, 2018).
However, it was noted, that the
“book is not easily digested nor comfortable”
but that is a small price to pay for the opportunity of totally reimagining of urban studies (Lancione, 2017). I agree with that, the book is full of many complicated notions, without clear definitions.
Conclusion
Overall, Amin and Thirft argue that cities cannot be reduced to systematic imperatives and territorial formations. Instead, they repeat over and over during the whole book, that cities should be considered as “complex assemblages”, that include multilevel interplay of many sophisticated components.
The book provides a large field for thought with many references to outstanding works in urban studies. Ash Amin and Nigel Thirft reveal a very unusual approach to the analysis of a city and human, emphasizing the crucial role of infrastructure.
References
(Books and articles)
Farías, I. (2011) The politics of urban assemblages. City, 15(3–4), 365–374.
Graham S. and Marvin, S. (Eds.). (2009). Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails. Chapter 8: Disruption By Design: Urban Infrastructure and Political Violence. New Yorkn: Routledge, 111–129.
Townsend, A. M. (2014). Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 400.
Beauregard, R. (2018). Book review: Seeing Like a City by Amin Ash and Thrift Nigel. Urban Studies Journal Limited, 938–940.
Putri, P. W. (2018). Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift 2017: Seeing Like a City. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 42(2), 359–361.
Other
Lancione M. (2017). Seeing Like A City By Ash Amin And Nigel Thrift. Society & Space // URL: https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/seeing-like-a-city-by-ash-amin-and-nigel-thrift
(date of the application: 24.12.2020)