Lecture by Neil Brenner - The Urban Age in Question

In what sense is the 21st century world urban? In this lecture, Neil Brenner critiques contemporary ideologies of the "urban age." Excavating Henri Lefebvre's (1970) notion of generalized urbanization, Brenner argues that the geographies of urbanization can no longer be conceptualized with reference to cities, metropolitan regions or even megalopolises, but today encompass diverse patterns and pathways across the planetary sociospatial landscape - from Manhattan to the Matterhorn, from the Pearl River Delta to Mount Everest, from the Nile River valley to the Pacific Ocean. This variegated urban fabric must become the focal point for new approaches to urban theory, strategies of collective intervention and imaginaries of built environments. Neil Brenner is Professor of Urban Theory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the coordinator of the newly founded Urban Theory Lab GSD. He previously served as Professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies, and as an affiliated faculty member of the American Studies Program at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago (1999); an MA in Geography from UCLA (1996); and a BA in Philosophy from Yale College (1991). This lecture is part of the Chicago Expander at Archeworks program. For more information about the program, please visit: http://www.archeworks.org/chicagoexpander/ This lecture is presented in collaboration with the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. To RSVP for this lecture, please visit: http://www.archeworks.org/event_rsvp.cfm