Assembling the multitude: questions about agency in the urban environment

Dorothee Brantz

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Urban Planning and Governance Philosophy, History, and Historiography Urban Development and Societal Issues

Abstract

In recent years, urban history has witnessed an expansion of actors. Historians have substantially and continuously extended their perspectives when it comes to examining the forces that drive urban developments. This expansion to an ever-broader range of human and increasingly also non-human actors (e.g. animals, technological systems and resources such as water) has opened up many new venues for investigations. It has also raised new questions about the role of cities in the history of social change. One of the most provocative ideas involves the claim that cities themselves should be considered agents and proprietors of change. Such notions of urban agency are premised on the assumption that, on the whole, cities are more than the sum of their parts. In this context, urbanization is not just viewed as the outcome of other determining societal forces, most notably capitalism. Instead, cities themselves are understood as determining entities and powerful enablers or preventers of material transformations. The investigative potential of such a perspective is tremendous, but the possible pitfalls should also not be underestimated. Exploring the explanatory prospects of urban agency requires, first of all, a critical engagement with both of the terms ‘agency’ and ‘the urban’. In my brief contribution to this roundtable, I would like to offer two points to the discussion: the first centres on the relationship between agency and intentionality/responsibilities, which is ultimately a political concern; the second aims to differentiate between the city as an entity and the urban as a process. Such a distinction, in turn, poses conceptual as well as methodological questions regarding the efficacy of agency as an urban concept.

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References

2008Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor‐network‐theory 1992A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation 2003The right to the city: social justice and the fight for public space 2005Logics of History 2006In the nature of cities urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism 2004The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space 2007Reassembling the Social—An Introduction to Actor Network Theory 2012Urban Assemblages: How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies

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