Introduction: Theory, Not Method – Thinking with Lefebvre

Abstract

In 1970, Henri Lefebvre formulated his thesis on complete urbanization. He understood urbanization as a general transformation of society, fundamentally changing the living conditions in urban and rural areas. Having studied rural life for decades, Lefebvre was well aware of the fundamental transformations of the traditional forms of agrarian societies occurring as a result of urbanization: not only the material structure, the built environment and the urban morphology were changing, but also everyday life. For Lefebvre, urbanization was an encompassing process stretching out in time and space, transforming all aspects of society and having a planetary reach. He described this process in dramatic words: the expanding city attacks the countryside, corrodes and dissolves it. This strange urban life, savage and articial at the same time, penetrates peasant life, dispossessing it of its traditional features, such as crafts and small centres. The village as a traditional unit of rural life has been absorbed or obliterated by larger entities and has become an integral part of networks of industrial production and consumption. At the same time cities have experienced the dissolution of their social and morphological structure through the extension of nancial, commercial and industrial networks accompanied by the dispersion of all sorts of urban fragments: suburbs, residential conglomerations, industrial complexes, tourist resorts, distant urban peripheries and so on.1

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