Modern Urban Theory in Question

Author(s): Philip Cooke

Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1990),
pp. 331-343
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the
Institute of British Geographers)
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 331

Modern urban theory in question

PHILIP COOKE
Reader,Departmentof City and RegionalPlanning,Universityof WalesCardiff,CardiffCF13YN

RevisedMS received3 May, 1990

ABSTRACT
The moderncity gave riseto modernurbantheory.Essentialist metaphorsdrawnfrombiology or economicshaveoften
been used to explainmodernurbanprocesses.Recentlya literaturehas emergedwhichsuggests a breakhas occurred
betweenmodernand post-modernways of theorizingthe city and other spheresof sociallife. A numberof different
critiquesof thisview areconsidered.Followinga discussionof similarities
anddifferencesbetweenthe modemcity andits
theory,andthe post-modemcity andits theory,it is suggestedthattherearemanycontinuitiesas well as discontinuities
betweenthem.

KEYWORDS:Post-modernism,
Urbantheory,City,Difference

INTRODUCTION found being deployed as the lens through which the

This paperwill explore the argumentthat explanations
of the nature of the city advanced from the 1930s
to the 1970s have been brought into question by
changes in the nature of cities themselves. This is a
materialistargument, unaffected by idealist assump-
tions about the immutability and universality of
theory or the belief that the 'essences' of material
existence remainunchanged by history. The proposal
that the cultural,political and economic organization
of European society is changing significantly (see,
for example, Jacques and Hall, 1989) is taken most
seriously in this analysis. Whether the changes are as
significant for North American and South-EastAsian
societies is questionable. To some extent, it can be
argued Europe is experiencing the twin forces of
Americanization and Japanizationat the same time.
But, as Europe becomes an increasingly potent
economic, culturaland, perhaps,political entity in its
own right, its own specificities are changing as much
through endogenous as exogenous pressures.
Recent commentatorsupon the changes in Western
urban culture (Soja, 1989; Harvey, 1989; Cooke,
1989a; 1990) have placed some emphasis on the chal-
lenge posed to modern concepts of urbanity by the
advent of a post-modern perspective. This perspec-
tive visibly influences the urban process, the forms
taken by urbaninvestment, the social relations found
in cities, the urbaneconomy, and the very appearance
as well as the reality of cities. The perspective is also
urban commentator observes the object of interest.
Some commentatorshave, of course, takena negative
view of the advent of the post-modem perspective
(e.g., Habermas, 1987; Harvey, 1989) seeing it as
allowing barbarismin through the front door. Others
are less hostile (Dear, 1986; Soja, 1989; Gregory,
1989), welcoming the innovation and freshnessof the
viewpoint. In this paper I will explore some of this
debate before advocating a pragmatic, middle-way
position. I will argue that modem urban theory
is becoming exhausted-something which right-
ish commentators have suspected for some time
(Saundersand Williams, 1986)-and that a new, more
appropriatetheorization of the contemporary city is
waiting to be born. However, I do not necessarily
celebrate its demise, nor do I think that post-
modernism has entirely swept it away as its architec-
ture appears to be sweeping out the monuments of
sixties affluence. Rather, I argue that what is called
'post-modernism'is in fact a critiqueof 'modernism'in
all its guises ranging from philosophy to architecture
(see, for extended comment, Cooke, 1989b; 1990)
and business practices to films and novels. I argue
that the critique is long overdue but that because
post-modern theory has no strong claim to be pro-
grammatic-to propose policies by which society
might systematically be developed and advanced-
it does not in fact depart fundamentally from the
much more programmatic,almost manifesto-ridden,

Trans.Inst. Br. Geogr.N.S. 15: 331-343 (1990) ISSN: 0020-2754 Printedin GreatBritain
332 PHILIPCOOKE
modernism it presumes to succeed. Modernism and the time. Despite the fact that hindsight is supposed
post-modernism are thus intertwined rather than to be perfect and should not be used to evaluate
irrevocably opposed. theory, it is difficult to resist when its progenitors
In developing the argument I shall proceed by often believe it to be universalisticwith regard both
asking three questions and seeking to answer them to time and space. Oddly enough, for historical
in three sections before progressing to a conclusion. materialists,who ought to recognize the disposabi-
The firstquestion is:What is modern urbantheory?In lity, as times change, of the theories used to interpret
answering that, I shall review and synthesize various reality, the works of Marx are constantly quarried
theories (for fuller discussion, see Cooke, 1983) for illumination of the present in terms of his past
which, from different perspectives sought to grapple analysis. The field is replete with irony, but one can
with the question: What is the nature of the city? conceive of what the modern city looked like from
The second question is: What is post-modern social the perspectives of the modern urbantheorists.
theory? Note the linking of 'post-modern'and 'social For the urban ecologists, the modern city was a
theory'. This is the way in which sociological dis- Darwinian social organism, an arena of competition,
course treats post-modernism (i.e., qua theory) as in invasion and succession, organic evolution and sur-
Denzin (1986), Kellner (1988; 1989a), Hutcheon vival. There is a furtherirony here in that Darwinian
(1988) or Huyssen (1987). Then, finally, I shall pose biology was itself in large measure a metaphor of
the question: What is post-modern urban theory? early capitalistsociety where competition produced a
This might be the theory, if it exists, which has heartlessly high level of births, deaths and amalga-
placed modern urbantheory in question. My answer mations of firms. From this perspective, the modern
to that provocation will be exploratory rather than city is conceived as a centred, evolving entity with
definitive. high density commercialactivity in its core, dominat-
ing the most accessible, valuable and desirable real
estate. On the fringes of the centre, occupying less
WHAT IS MODERN URBAN THEORY?
desirable, cheaper but still accessible areas, are the
Modern urban theory is totalizing. This is not small business districts, rooming house districts,
necessarily-as it has mostly been taken (see Harvey, market-areasand such like. And squeezing this area
1987; 1989)-a criticism.What is problematic about up against the commercialheart are the big industry
totalization is, as FredricJameson (1989) has so ably zones, linked to long-distance transport, close to
shown, a tendency to reductionismand unidimension- markets for labour and selling produce. Interspersed
ality. What has to be theorized is, not a universalistic with these industrialareas are various kinds of work-
system, but a system of differences. This is difficult, ing class and what we might now call 'underclass'
and modern urban theory failed to cope adequately housing, privately rented in the main. Differentially
with complexity. Thus, for the Chicago School, (most located here too is the 'bright lights' or 'uptown'
notably in Robert Park'swork) cities were ecological correlate to the commercial 'downtown', maybe a
systems (see Smith, 1988), for urban rent theorists red light area and various ethnic ghettos. Beyond
they were perfect markets tending to equilibrium, these differentiatedareas are the more homogeneous
for urban managerialists they were, first, systems middle-classand commuter-dominatedsuburbia,dis-
of exclusion with governmental gatekeepers, and tanced from the hurly-burly of the inner city but
secondly, systems of exclusion with marketized connected to workplaces in the downtown area by
gatekeepers, and for structuralistMarxists they were public or private transportation links. The modern
systems for allocating collective consumption goods city is thus centred, hierarchical,purposive (money-
and services. In each case, and without much carica- making through commerce and industry), selective
turing these perspectives can be seen to have been and (for the middle-classes), distanced. These terms
weak in dealing with difference (though the stature are deployed by Hassan (1985; see also Cooke, 1988
of the work of the Chicago School is shown by its and Harvey, 1989 who also deploy them) as desig-
relative sophistication in this respect). nators of modernism in its multifarious forms and
Let us take a few examples of modern urbantheory they work quite well in the urbancontext too.
to see both how they perceived the city and the Chicago School ethnography was an important
extent to which their prognoses make sense in the but limited tool for discovering the diversity of the
present context. This is, of course, a totally unfair city's widely differentiated populations. But sub-
thing to do, although practicallyeveryone does it all sequent urban ecologists replaced explanation with
 Modernurbantheoryin question
mere description. The neo-classical urban land rent
theorists such as Alonso (1964) took this description
as broadly accurate but sought to explain it by
reducing it to the behavioural outcomes of market-
driven rational economic men (sic). Men trade off
space for accessibility, enduring long journeys to
work in exchange for long back gardens. Commerce
has a high utility for centrality, suburbanitesfor per-
ipherality;industry has a high utility for accessibility,
small businesses and poorer people for survival in the
depths of the inner-city.
The limitations of these perspectives are plain to
see but rather than seeking an intrinsic critique, the
point is to try and conceptualize the contemporary
city (bearing in mind the pitfalls of generalization)
by negation, looking for ways in which present-day
cities converge or diverge with the modernist percep-
tion. First, most cities retain and have enhanced the
centralcommercialcore. There was a period when the
suburbanization of offices threatened that charac-
teristic, and there is at least one city-Phoenix,
Arizona-which simply does not have it, but that
other American suburb in search of a city, Los
Angeles, has in the 1980s developed a very modernist
downtown, high-rise commercial core, much to the
astonishment of its detractors, as Soja (1989) has
shown. Cities elsewhere in the world mainly conform
to the modernist pattern in this respect. Secondly
large-scale industry has largely absented itself from
the inner areas of the city during the intervening
years. The restructuring of the 1970s and early
1980s left often large industrial areas of city derel-
ict and unused. Small business, by contrast, con-
tinues to find a home, even enlarging its presence
in some inner cities as Scott (1988) and Mulgan
(1989) suggest.
However, some of this inner-city small-firm
growth is more likely to be media and arts-related,as
well as being tied to the expanding financialservices
industries, than the 'industrialdistricts' of old. More-
over, this is precisely the terrainon which struggles
between the remnants of old industrialquartersand
newer, gentrifying residential and consumption uses
are now occurring, as Zukin (1988) has so ably illus-
trated. This, then, constitutes the third dimension of
difference from the position obtaining in the modern
city: the recolonization by the middle-class of the
inner city, perhaps more accurately the 'new middle
class', those with 'culturalcapital'to invest (Bourdieu,
1984; Featherstone, 1987). Old industrial buildings,
warehouses, decaying Victorian tenements are
amongst the most rapidly valorising elements of
333
contemporary urban real estate, especially if they
have a waterfront location.
Last,what of suburbia?It has, in general, expanded
but become more differentiatedas (in Britain)formerly
public-owned estates become private, inner-city
working-class residents have moved to older or
cheaperinnersuburbia,the (old) middle-classhas con-
solidated its grip on outer suburbia and extended
beyond it to small, ruraltowns. But suburbiahas also
become a location for newer, cleaner industry, for
out-of-town shopping centres and leisure complexes.
Moreover, much of the high technology industry
which clusters in satellites around some of the larger
cities is essentially suburbanin character.So, to that
extent, there has been something of a turning inside-
out, a partial reversal, unevenly developed, of the
classic modernist motifs. Industry is increasingly to
be found in the suburbsratherthan inside the city, the
new middle classes reoccupy parts of former indus-
trial space its grandparents may have been familiar
with. But this is not a complete overturning, rather
a process of development within the shell of the
modern city.
But there is another, less individualistic theory of
the modern city, and here we may, through its optic,
see rathergreater changes. This is the theorization of
the Fordist city. Although this theorization has its
origins in Europe, especially in the work of Castells
(1977), its correlate exists also in North America in
the work of Walker (1978; 1981) and, more recently,
Floridaand Feldman(1988). There are importantdis-
tinctions in these theorizations, governed partly by
the differentmodes of regulation obtaining in the two
continents. In the Europeancase, the state was often
directly responsible for the construction of public-
sector housing. This was especially true in Britain
and France,the Netherlands and Denmark,but farless
so in Belgium, West Germany or Spain where social
housing was provided by non-state agencies or firms.
In the American case, relatively little public sector
housing was built, though the Community Renewal
Programmeproduced such developments in the most
north-easterninnercity areas,most obviously in New
York. Rather,state policy at federallevel, following a
Keynesian pathway, resulted in the easing of private
credit provision, relaxation at local level of land-use
zoning, and majornational roadbuildingprogrammes
which fuelled the demand for and supply of suburban
housing on a massive scale for a rapidly expanding
private sector housing market. Suburbanization of
private housing was also a feature of urbandevelop-
ment in Europeancities but it was relatively limited in
334 PHILIPCOOKE
most countries except Britain, Sweden and some
southern Europeancountries.
Of course, the modern city seen through Fordist
eyes was not only a setting for the production and
consumption of housing, it was also an importantsite
for developments within industry, not least service
industry. However, the definite emphasis in the
research into the modern city from the structuralist
perspective was in the provision of housing and the
more general production of the built environment,
including associated commercialand retailing activi-
ties that seemed to be providing the dynamism for
urban development. To that extent, therefore, it can
be argued that this perspective on the modern city
shared the orthodox view of the important el-
ements: suburban growth; a growing central busi-
ness district; inner city instability as urban renewal
replaced the rooming-house and small business dis-
tricts. The key theoretical difference lay in the spe-
cification of causality. For the urban ecologists it lay
in the competitive expression of individual con-
sumer preferences. For the political economists it
lay in the pursuit of conflicting class interests by
powerful controllers of finance, using both land rent
increases and the urban planning apparatus to
further their capacity for capital accumulation
against the powerless inner city residential and
small business interests.
Where the American and European perspective
differed significantly was on the question of the
state's general role in urban dynamics. The French
structuralistssuch as Castells, Lojkineand Preteceille
(see Pickvance, 1976) perceived the state to be
becoming hegemonic in this process. The state was
not merely instrumentalfor finance capital;it had its
own agenda. This was to assemble healthier and
better educated workforces in large, public units of
collective consumption-modern high rise dwell-
ings, linked to public hospital, clinic, educational and
leisurefacilities,often on the urbanfringes or in urban
renewal schemes in cities. This was very much a social
democratic project. Such housing and facilities were
seen as socialist housing, forerunnersof the Eastern
European concept of mass, worker housing. This
chimed with the modernist idea of progress, of cen-
tralized social engineering, of transforming society
through architecture, and it attracted modernist
architects like Le Corbusierwho built socialist hous-
ing in his Unites d'Habitation in Marseille and
Nantes, for example. Elsewhere, Danish, Dutch and
Britisharchitectscopied and massively expanded the
style as in the Copenhagen FingerPlan,Amsterdam's
Bijlmermeer and the high rise council estates of
numerous Britishcities.
Industrywas placed backstage in this urbantheory.
Castells saw Fordist industry as having increasingly
developed its regional divisions of labour:it was no
longer organized in the city, although its 'branch
circuits'were to be found locating in the vicinity of
the 'grandsensembles'on the outskirts of the city.
However, industry's connections with cities were
associated primarilywith the desire for large, mass-
collective workforces. The owners and managers of
large capital no longer had any roots in particular
cities. Thus the politics of cities were, from the
French perspective, increasingly driven by the
dynamics of collective consumption. The planning of
new 'ensembles'could give rise to urban conflict
as groups sought to protect their older, cheaper,
residential areas. Some such groups might even
link interests with workers struggling against the
oppressive work norms of Fordist industry to form
urban social movements, though most of such
activity remainedat the lower level of urbanprotest.
A milder version of this theory was to be found in
Britainwhere urban systems were seen increasingly
to be being controlled by 'urban managers', poli-
ticians or public officialsresponsible for the allocation
of housing and land (Pahl, 1976; Harloe, 1975). Later,
the theory was reformulatedto include private-sector
actors such as estate agents who were ascribed
pivotal power in the allocation of urban resources,
discriminating against poorer groups by 'redlining'
low-value areas, and enabling owner-occupiers to
move up the housing market through preferential
credit provision. This was the Weberian 'ironcage' of
modernity in the process of being constructed in the
city. Weber had argued that bureaucracy was the
highest form of civilized, rationalsocial and economic
organization,and in the city the urbanmanagerswere
to be seen as Weberian actors, wielding substantial
power over the lives of the masses.
The rise of neoliberal political power in the 1980s
has dealt a severe blow to the theory of the modern
city as a system dominated by collective consump-
tion issues. Such housing still exists but it is
increasingly marginalized or privatized (at least in
Britain)into insignificance. Oddly enough the con-
sumptionist perspective now lives on largely in
the rightist theory of 'consumption sectors' which
reduces people's voting preferencesto their situation
either side of the public-privateconsumption divide
(Saunders, 1984). Those in the marginalized public
sector are thought likely to vote (if they vote at
 Modernurbantheoryin question
all) for the Labour Party, everyone else who can
choose private housing, education and health is
to be expected to vote Conservative. That owner-
occupation in Britain is now above 63 per cent
suggests-if the theory has any credibility-that
never again can the Conservatives be beaten in
Britain.However, the existence of areas, such as the
older industrial regions, where there is both high
owner-occupation and high historic levels of Labour-
voting is only too conveniently forgotten in this per-
spective. The neo-Weberian theory of consumption
sectors as status groups whose political preferences
are determined by housing tenure seems as improb-
able as the Weberian theory that bureaucracyis the
highest, most efficient form of resource allocation in
capitalist society.
Hence, the modern city does not, apart from
important differences in the assignation of causality
to the processes by which it receives its characteristic
form, differsignificantlyin the main perspectives that
have been discussed. It is a structure dominated by
an increasingly large commercial centre, typified by
high-rise, high-density office blocks, retailing malls
and public buildings. It retains a working class inner-
city from which much large-scale industry and many
smaller businesses have fled, leaving ethnic ghettos,
large-scale, public sector, high density housing and
crumbling, former lower middle-class residential
areas. There are suburbs which, no longer purely
residential, have been joined by decentralizing
industry and new out-of-town commercialand retail-
ing facilities. Residential suburbs are segregated by
income groups. The whole is managed by public
officials who have often appeared to share the
objective interests of private finance industry. Indus-
trialists,meanwhile, play little direct part in influenc-
ing the affairsor the developmental trajectory of the
city. The key question is: to what extent does that
picture hold for today? Has the modern city been
significantly transformed by tendencies which are
referredto as 'post-modern'?To answer that question
it is first necessary to consider what the theory of
post-modern society looks like, and then ask whether
it has relevance for urbantheory.
WHAT IS POST-MODERN SOCIAL
THEORY?
It is questionable whether post-modernism is theory
since so much of the writing that goes under the name
is opposed to generalization, against grand narrative
and rejects attempts at metatheory, most obviously
335
in Lyotard's (1984) initial thoughts on the subject.
Certainly,the early debate on Post-modernismfound
Habermas (1985) treating it not only as anti-theory
but a threat to the very foundations of the Enlighten-
ment, Reason and Western metaphysics. The anti-
theoretic slant, though, derives from the perception
of a real problem regarding the foundations of
knowledge. The problem is that as we all know, but
conveniently overlook-theory seeks to equate sub-
ject and object in a way that is universally true, but
it cannot. For that to be the case, the theory would
have to replicate the world. So theory is, practically
speaking, a form of narrative.Stories about the world
are produced by individuals and good ones are con-
curred with by large numbers of people, but they
remain narrative artefacts, ways of seeing, logical
schematic grids placed over our perception of the
world into which some parts fit better than others, as
a result of which some degree of illumination may
ensue.
The modern urban theories discussed earlier are
good examples of this attempt at grand explanatory
narrative.For the urban ecologists, the grand narra-
tive is biology. We reject that story because we
know-despite what sociobiology now tries to tell
us-that social practices cannot be reduced to the
level of plant and animalbehaviour. For the land rent
neoclassicists the narrative is one of social practices
being essentialized into narroweconomic calculation.
But that story excludes such alternative,unpriceable,
rationalitiesas those which lead people to place cul-
tural or communitarianvalues higher in their list of
priorities.The story of the modern city as a system for
the allocation of collective consumption goods is
equally partial in its neglect of the importance of
marketrelationsin structuringthe city. And the grand
narrativeof the city as a condensation of class struggle
over the control of the built environment neglects the
non-class bases of social identity. Castells (1983)
showed these to be of great significancein the creation
of urbanvalue through reviving derelict areas as art-
ists' quartersor distinctive culturalliving and working
spaces. Weberian theories of managerialistor status-
seeking behaviour are equally partial.
Post-modern theory draws attention to these
problems of representation, subject-object relations
and the necessarily selective, therefore exclusive,
nature of 'knowledge'. The implication of this is that
all theories, to the extent that they provide the
grounds for cultural,social or political action are to
some extent repressive because they privilege certain
kinds of explanation at the expense of others. The
336 PHILIPCOOKE

problem is, in one sense, a problem of totalization but 'the endingof what is calledthe ModernAge. Justas
it is, particularly,a problem of essentialist totalization Antiquitywas followedby severalcenturiesof Oriental
(see, for example also Graham,1990). That is the kind ascendency,whichWesternersprovinciallycalltheDark
of totalization that post-modernism rejects. On the Ages, so now the ModernAge is beingsucceededby a
post-modernperiod'(Mills,1959,p. 184).
positive side this points to a new challenge, which is
to attempt to totalize by theorizing a system of differ-
ences ratherthan of universals.On the negative side, In this new epoch he thought that the Enlighten-
this may be humanly impossible. ment hopes of freedom through reason would have
So, to proceed, it is necessary to untangle the been subverted by the Weberian 'iron cage' of
various positions that have been articulated in the modernity and that we were headed for a society
face of these problems. It is clear that not all post- of 'cheerful robots', mindlessly consuming and
modernists think alike, but it is possible to offer a unconcerned about progressive political action.
guide to the different shades of meaning inscribedin Baudrillard extends these fears into a deeply
post-modern thinking, and in the process, to elicit pessimistic view of the world in which modern struc-
some common elements that form the main lin- tures such as class, the division of labourand political
eaments of this critical perspective. I will do this by economy have been dissolved into a world of images,
presenting four views which I shall label respectively a blurringof cultural,geographical and philosophical
those of: the Apocalyptics; the Sceptics; the Critics; distinctiveness, and the interpenetration of the dif-
and the Pragmatics. ferent spheres of society. This is represented in ideas
such as the aestheticization of politics or the com-
TheApocalyptics modification of culture, each of which designate a
The apocalytic version of post-modernism is associ- breakdown of social structures.The only guidance in
ated with the work of Baudrillard(1988). The origins place of the old structures is supplied by simulated
of Baudrillard'stheories lie in his disaffection with realities presented to the impressionable masses by
historical materialism, his enthusiastic embrace of advertising, video-culture, television and so on.
certain ideas of Marshall McLuhan regarding the Because reality cannot be grasped, these simulations
domination over social life exerted by the mass- become reality, or hyper-reality and people act out
media, and his belief that media hegemony has their lives on the model provided by soap operas,
dissolved the structures of society into a dense, pop-videos and shopping malls.
undifferentiatedmass and with it brought 'the end of While Baudrillard points to some disturbing
history'. This latter phrase, which has given rise to a characteristics of contemporary society (and Kroker
raging debate as a result of a recent article in the USA and Cook, 1986 inflate Baudrillard'spessimism to the
(Fukuyama,1989) on post-modernism in the context heights of excess) it is clear that he is as trapped in
of the collapse of communist rule in EasternEurope, a unidimensional, totalizing perspective as those
reveals certain similaritieswith the neoconservative whom the post-modernists criticize. Of particular
views of Daniel Bell (1989) who invented the similar concern is his patronising view of 'the masses' being
In effect Baudrillard
concept of 'the end of ideology' in the 1950s. In his totally taken in by sign-systems.
many writings since then on post-industrial society mistakes certain effects of contemporary culture for
and cultural contradictions in capitalism (Bell, 1973; its complete condition. He has in this sense been
1976) he sees post-modem culture as destroying the taken in by his own propaganda (see also Collins,
Weberian bourgeois world of bureaucracy,techno- 1989; Kellner,1989b).
cracy, the capitalisteconomy, democraticpolitics and
religious values by its hedonism, narcissism, and TheSceptics
reliance on instinct, impulse and will. This radically The clearest example of a theorist who has explored
individualizedculturehe sees as the working out into and articulatedthe key elements of post-modernism,
a dominant, though distorted, form of the rebellious yet who is far from promoting them as other than
sub-cultures which thrived in the bohemian world an ambiguous cultural expression of late capitalist
of artistic modernism, developed into the 'sixties' market economics, is Fredric Jameson. Jameson
counter-culture, and are now running capitalist (1984a; 1984b; 1985; 1989) is not apocalyptic in his
society. Even before Bell began this somewhat eccen- view of post-modern tendencies, though some of his
tric, culturally reductionist analysis, C. Wright Mills commentary on the hedonism, glorification of con-
(1959) had written sombrely of: sumption, and apparentdetachment from historically
 Modernurbantheoryin question
progressive, emancipatory social forces occupies
similar ground to that more pessimistic strain.
Seeking to unravel postmodernism from the inside,
he recognizes that there are numerous opposing
positions taken by those who have addressed
postmodern issues. These are:
(i) reactionaryantimodernists
(e.g.,QuinlanTerry*)
(ii) progressiveantimodernists
(e.g.,CharlesJencks)
(iii) reactionary
pro-post-modernists (e.g.,TomWolfe)
(iv)
progressivepro-post-modernists (e.g.,Jean-
FrancoisLyotard)
(v) reactionary (e.g.,DanielBell*)
pro-modernists
(vi) progressivepro-modernists (e.g.,Jurgen
Habermas)
(vii) reactionaryanti-post-modernists (e.g.,Hilton
Kramer)
(viii) progressiveanti-post-modernists(e.g.,Manfredo
Tafuri)
(see,Jameson,1984b).
*Thesenamesinsertedby the presentauthor.
In other words Jameson clearly recognizes post-
modernism as a contested terrain in which it by no
means follows that someone who celebrates the
post-modern critique of modernism's centredness,
unidimensionality,distance, selectiveness and auster-
ity (especially in the arts and architecture)is thereby
a neo-conservative. There is a growing literature
seeking to explore and develop the progressive
strains in post-modernism beginning with Foster's
(1985) collection to which Jameson contributed and
interventions such as that of Arac (1986), Schulte-
Sasse (1987), Ryan (1988) and most recently Jacques
and Hall (1989). Moreover, Jameson himself in an
interview (Jameson,1982) has argued,from a Marxist
position, against the pursuit of the single great
idea (presumably of a classless communist society)
through the unified Party programme, and in favour
of a politics which is personally and socially sensitive
to differenceand diversity.
Nevertheless, Jamesonremainsa scepticalMarxist,
waiting to be convinced that post-modernismactually
has progressive intent. This is for two reasons out-
lined in his chapter in Foster's book (Jameson,1985).
Firsthe perceives post-modern cultureto be based on
pastiche. This means it lacks authenticity, its only
originality lies in nostalgically re-mixing modernist
innovations. He compares this unfavourably with
modernist parody that contained authenticity in the
respect it paid to the mores it creatively satirized.His
other concern is the loss of a sense of time, of history
337
in post-modern culture. The recycling of modern
styles creates the sense-almost schizophrenic-of a
permanent present. Together, these two problems
imply compliance not rebellion. It has been argued
(see Cooke, 1990; Hutcheon, 1988) that Jameson's
usage of the word parody is too restrictive, as is his
reading of post-modernist treatments of history. The
latter is clearly present in what is often presented as
post-modernist culture, most notably architecture,
but also novels such as those of Rushdie, Marquez
and Fowles. And the ironic treatment of history
which such art often proclaimsstill qualifiesas parody
ratherthan pastiche because it uses history creatively
to criticize, amongst other things, modernism's loss
of contact with popular consciousness. Other writers
who share Jameson's scepticism include those who
contribute to the journals Telos, such as Russell
Berman (1984; 1986) and Christine Burger (1986),
and New GermanCritique,such as Andreas Huyssen
(1984).
The Critics
The most vociferous criticof post-modern theory has
been JurgenHabermas.His focus is primarilydirected
at the effects upon rational thinking of the post-
modern critique of Enlightenment thought on the
commensurabilityof subject and object. He considers
the contributions of writers such as Foucault and,
particularly, Derrida and Lyotard (see Hohendahl,
1986) to be subversive, anarchisticand to signal the
return to a barbaricform of discourse and even poli-
tics in which the Nietzschean 'will to power' becomes
the only adjudicator of truth, something which
Habermasequates with Nazi ideology.
Lyotard has been equally criticalof Habermas,for
reasons alreadymentioned:his adherenceto a univer-
salistic social theory with consensus being forced by
the citation of the rules of reason and logic, when such
systems, as mental constructs,may not-indeed from
Lyotard's viewpoint, cannot-represent the world.
Habermasis thus seen as conservative and out-dated
in his adherence to eighteenth century metaphysics.
But Habermaspersists in his mission to continue the
unfinished project of modernity. His view, which he
actually shares to some extent with some post-
modern theorists, is that modernity has gone astray.
That is, he accepts the distinction first made by Kant
and reiteratedby Weber that the modes of rationality
in history are threefold-aesthetics, science and
morality-and that scientific reasoning in the form
of systems rationality, necessary for dealing with
338 PHILIP
COOKE
complexity, now colonizes the spheres of human
identity, what Habermas refers to as 'the lifeworld',
composed of culture, community and personality.
The systems are no longer at the service of the
person, rather the person's identity is increasingly
defined in terms of the functional reason of systems
rationality.
Habermas'thesis is that the protection of the life-
world is of the greatest significance otherwise we
become the apotheosis of Mills' 'cheerfulrobots'. It is
only by retaining the foundations of Western reason
that the lifeworld can be reclaimedfrom the systems.
The means to achieving that lies in language which is
the very method used by people to express to each
other theirmeanings and interpretationsboth of their
relationshipto the materialworld, and their relation-
ships to individuals and collectivities. Habermas
argues that the post-modern rejection of the possi-
bilities of universally comprehensible discourse
between persons is mere rhetoric,that to believe that
is in direct contradiction with their practices in
expressing such incredulity.Habermas,having, in his
social theory, shown that he is alert to some of the
problems indicated even by apocalyptics such as
Baudrillard,refuses totally to accept the argument
that language is just a chain of words which refer to
each other without having any direct,certaincapacity
to represent the world 'out there'. Habermasaccepts
that reason may not be absolute, but that through
communicationand discussion, following the rational
rules, which Lyotard says are arbitrary,democratic
consensus regarding 'the truth'can be reached.
Hohendahl (1986) argues that the distance
between Habermasand his criticsis lessening because
he agrees that there has been a weakening of the
modern paradigm,and that Western metaphysics are
becoming exhausted, not least because of internaland
external critiques of the technological disasters to
which they have given rise with almost as much
moral indifferenceas the technological benefits they
have bestowed. But Habermas argues that language
is capable of giving us the means to form a new and
better theory of reason. This, says Hohendahl, is
Habermas'weakness. He conflates a dual function of
language into a single one. He says it is both des-
criptive and normative, believing that values lie
embedded in language, waiting for us to discover
them. This is oddly like the post-structuralistdisbelief
in the capacity of mind to transcend the subject-
object dichotomy as a result of which, they conclude,
only texts matterin the determinationof what counts
as knowledge.
ThePragmatics
This leads us conveniently on to the last position to
be discussed here, that of the pragmatists.Faced with
the critiques by Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard of
Western rationalism Rorty (1980, 1989) and others
(see the collection by Rajchman& West, 1985) have
proposed a way out of the impasse. The solution
is rather close to but less idealistically rooted in
the belief in the magic properties of language of
Habermas. Taking account of Lyotard's argument
that modernist discourse, politics and practice is
oppressive in its universalism and, in particular,
exclusion of dissident, particular,local or minority
voices, Rorty accepts the critique of philosophy
thereby implied. Moreover, following Foucault's
(1980) critique of the privileging of the centred
subject through whom much of western culture
was conveyed, whether as master-narrator,master-
author,or master-musician,Rorty conceded the view
that in this lay the origin of designations of normal
and non-normalpersons, ideas and practices.It was a
device for defining not only what was to count as
knowledge, but who was to count as an integrated
member of society. That knowledge signified power
could easily be shown by reference to the ways
society had disciplined those defined as abnormal,
often condemning them to prisons, mental asylums
or, more latterly, psychiatric hospitals. Rorty aligns
himself with the idea that the centred subject as a
figure of authority needs to be de-centred into the
multiple, local voices of those in the margins as well
as those traditionally thought of as in the main-
stream.
Lyotard claims his concern is less with under-
mining Western metaphysics as Habermassees it and
more with including differentvoices in the debate. In
this way, even if consensus on issues cannot be
reached,minority or local concerns will not, in theory
at least, be marginalizedinto insignificance.This frag-
mentation of discourses,vocabulariesand viewpoints
is thus a democratization of knowledge, a prepared-
ness to admit the voice of others, and in everyday
life a recognition of the need to open up possibilities
for local interests to experience a far higher degree
of autonomy and self-expression than hitherto. Out
of this, believes Rorty optimistically, will come a
new maturity in dealing with the contingency that
defines existence and, as a consequence, new social
solidarities.
So pragmatism, or the revival of pragmatism by
neo-pragmatist philosophers and others, maps out a
theory of action rooted in a post-modern theory of
 Modernurbantheoryin question
society as less centred (though perhaps not wholly
de-centred) than modern society, less hierarchical,
more differentiated,less clearly purposive (end of the
Cold War: Green issues versus growth etc.), less
exclusive (more accessible definitions of culture)
and thus less distanced. Though much of this seems
familiar from some developments, many at the
leading-edge of contemporary society, it is clear that
the resolution of these tendencies into a coherent
form of society is a long way off, and in any case
will, in many aspects, be severely contested. Rorty's
solidaristicdiscursive community still, in practice,has
to come to terms with power, exercised, in Foucault's
conception, through the unequal distribution of
knowledge. The informationsociety may be upon us,
but as Lyotard(1984) has alreadynoted, post-modern
society is characterized by the transformation of
language itself into a commodity, via the value-added
digital networks that service the corporate and state
megastructures that will surely dominate as they
have come to dominate modem society. The recent
work of Castells too is firmly rooted in a recognition
of the power of the controllersof the space of flows in
the informational city by contrast with his earlier
'modernist'texts (Castells, 1989).
WHAT IS POST-MODERN URBAN
THEORY?
If post-modern social theory conceives of a future in
which society is:
(i) proneto sensorydominationby electronicmedia
imagery.
(ii) prey to colonizationof its lifeworldby markets
(economic,political,social).
(iii) inclinedto glorifyconsumptionas the expression
of self.
(iv) culturallyplural in the horizontalrather than
vertical(mass:elite)sense.
(v) socially polarizedby expandedincome differen-
tials.
(vi) locallydistinctivein its conceptionsandinterpret-
ationof reality.
(vii) democraticin social,culturalandeconomicas well
as politicalspheres.
(viii) pragmaticin its social interactionrather than
utopian.
(ix) more self-supportiveeconomicallythroughnet-
works.
(x) less dominatedby master-narratives of militarism
andwar.
339
What might this imply for a post-modern theory of
the city?
For the moment, the city remains structured by
the historical forces that have created it, the most
recent of which has been twentieth century
modern planning and urban development. But, not
surprisingly, the new elements deriving from the
critique of modernism are first visible in its archi-
tecture. Whereas modernist design theory stressed
centrality, focused on high rise corporate monu-
ments, residential tower blocks and suburbia, the
critique rejects abstract formalism and celebrates
what might be called 'pop vernacular'.In the USA,
where it has developed furthest, it is called 'road-
side eclecticism' (Venturi et al., 1977). This derives
from the environment created by commercial ad-
vertising in which the signs were to be large, and
the buildings small. Its clearest form is to be found
in the ubiquitous out-of-town shopping malls and
sprawling strip developments. Architecture of this
kind has been colonized by a commercial 'shop till
you drop' ethos.
A different theme has been a turning away from
austere, International-Style sameness in building
styles, towards a new vocabulary of the exotic and
the foreign. Ornamentation,neo-classicism,pagodas,
Egyptian and Art Deco revivalism are amongst the
elements which influence the facades of new build-
ings. These are reminiscent of Baudrillard'sstress on
simulation and the pulling of styles away from their
origins, often to mix them together to create an
enlarged sense of reality, a new kind of International
Style, reminiscentin some ways of World Music. The
quest for the new, the strange, the more exotic and
yet mixed together styles has produced a kind of
World Architecture.
The third design element is not merely the 'glibly
decorative' as Frampton(1985) calls it but ratherwhat
might be called vernacularrevival. This consists of
refurbishingold buildings, especially warehouses and
usable Victorian industrialbuildings then integrating
new buildings in complementary styles into a
planned whole. The most obvious expression of this
form of retrogression is found in the ubiquitous
waterfront developments in those American and
Europeancities possessing the appreciatingasset of a
derelictdocklandsarea(on aspects of this, see Ley and
Olds, 1988). But it is also found with increasingregu-
larity in city centre offices and 'office villages'. The
modernist tower block is being challenged outside
the most expensive core of the city by smaller scale,
340 PHILIPCOOKE
more user-friendly suburbanoffice clusters, some of
which reproducelocal vernacularbuilding styles.
Beyond the physical reconstruction of often very
large former industrialareas of the city, the manage-
ment of urban affairshas shifted in significant ways
too. Whereas the modern city was run by urban
managerscontrolling access to public-sectorhousing,
providing state-fundededucation and leisure facilities
to lend at least the appearance of a collective con-
sumption ethic to the activities of city bureaucrats,
the post-modem city is increasingly given over to
urbanentrepreneurship(Harvey, 1989; Mayer, 1989).
City-marketingis part of this new mission: cities are
sold as places to visit for tourismor business. So there
is also a trend to install the facilitiesnecessary to such
functions-conference centres, hotels, cultural,facili-
ties-a package of devices to encourage spending of
the discretionarydollar or deutschmarkin this rather
thanthat city. Hence city marketingis muchmore than
promotion; it involves management, commercializa-
tion of public services and even, in some cases, the
complete transformationof the urban planning pro-
cess into a marketizedservice (Ashworth and Voogd,
1988). The Eindhoven city marketing strategy
involves expenditure of 275 million guilders on a
multifunctionalculturaland retailingcomplex alone.
Inserted into these architectural and managerial
changes is the emergence of what has been referredto
as the post-Fordist regime of industrialorganization
(Scott, 1988; Soja, 1989; Harvey, 1989; Cooke, 1990;
for critiques, see Amin and Robins, 1990; Lovering,
1990). This involves a more network-based, small-
scale, interactive and flexible form of industrial
organization than its modern predecessor Fordism.
To work well it often requires the revival of pre-
Fordist spatial forms in cities such as the industrial
'quarters', districts or localities that, for example,
are now being actively revived in Birmingham'snew
urban strategy (see the Observer supplement on
Birmingham,December 3, 1989). This recognizes the
growing fragmentation of product markets into low
value and high value, designer or luxury niches. Low-
value consumption goods are increasingly imported
from the Third World to be sold in supermarkets
while luxury items may be both produced and sold in
inner urbanniches where vernaculararchitectureand
high-cost consumption amenities are aimed at attract-
ing wealthy buyers from gentrified neighbourhoods
nearby and the more exclusive suburbs at home and
abroad. The revival of high class craft industry may
be one of the more lasting featuresof the post-Fordist
economy.
How have these tendencies been received in the
recent literature on post-modern urban theory?
Though the fit is by no means perfect, at least three
of the positions outlined in the previous section are
represented. There is no obvious representative of
the Apocalyptic category, except perhapsBaudrillard
himself who has written about, though scarcely
theorized, US cities (Baudrillard,1988). The Sceptic is
most nearly represented in the work of Soja (1989)
who takes an ironic look, especially in Los Angeles, at
the emergent forms of the new urbanity,recognizing
the fragmented, localized, very uneven forms of
development found in that multinucleated, dynami-
cally diversifying consumer's paradise.The Marxist-
modernist in Soja battles with post-modernism rather
as in Jameson.Yet though he finds himself now more
comfortable with the idea of an epochal social
and urban transition his approach remains clearly
modernist.Thus, Soja conceives this shift as a restruc-
turing within modernity rather than a complete
break with it. This ambivalence is expressed in
Soja's rather confusing pictogram of the State-
managed Fordist city (Soja, 1989) which despite
the nomenclature contains most of the elements of
the post-modern, entrepreneurial city: an interna-
tionalizing and much expanded CBD, an inner-city
urban renewal and gentrification sector, suburban
industrial and commercial or financial satellites, and
new industrial districts both in ethnic ghetto areas
and the city centre as well as in the emerging
outer city. Except for the waterfront element, this
list serves as a reasonably full account of the pres-
ent hegemony of a triumphant,globalized, flexible,
market-drivencapitalist urbanity.
This too is the picturepresented by urbantheory's
criticof post-modernism(Harvey, 1989). Harvey sees
the post-modern critique of modernity as relativistic
and defeatist, quoting Habermas' (1987) rejection
of the incommensurability of subject and object in
support of his view. Where modernism was, he
argues, concerned with the pursuit of progress and
future improvements to the social condition, post-
modernism is concerned only with the pursuit of
what can be sold in the market. He recognizes the
post-modern tendency to pull away from the idea of
master-planningand to deal with the city through the
design of fragments. This, as already indicated often
involves the use of vernaculartraditions,local narra-
tives and customized architecture.Instead of social
purposes shaping space, space shapes purpose by
the premiumplaced on aesthetics. This results in the
city taking on the appearance of collage. Initially
 Modernurbantheoryin question
associating all of this with neo-conservative politics
and thereby condemning it out of hand, Harvey now
recognizes that post-modernism does not necessarily
lead directly back to the barbarismof the Third Reich
(though there are numerousallusions to precisely that
in his book), but that it may have progressive
possibilities. But, he concludes, these are ghettoized
in local discourses-as if the possibility of com-
munication were effaced by the very invocation of
post-modernism. Thus, for Harvey post-modernism
is dangerous, politically quietistic or worse, and
modernity must be protected from the epochal break.
A more pragmatic view is taken in the work of
Cooke (1990). The basic argument is that what is
called post-modernism is seen not as a replacement
for but rather a critique and potential renewal of
modernism.The reason for this is precisely because of
the limited project which post-modernists have set
for themselves. Their work is primarilya critique, of
austerity and elitism, of centralismand patronization,
of a failure to deal with difference and local con-
cerns-a failure to find a framework for dealing
with systems of difference. To wish the further
democratization and opening up of culture, the city
and expressions of identity rather than illegalizing
differenceor sweeping it under the carpetis to extend
the project of modernity. It is to develop the project
of modernity intensively rather than extensively,
vertically rather than horizontally. It envisages a
decentralized rather than a centred, imperializing
vision of progress. The problem is that, as yet, those
who are called post-modernists have still to articulate
the full meaning of that potential development of
the modern idea of progress. In some ways it has
proceeded further, in practical terms, in some of
the developments in Eastern Europe both inside
and outside the Soviet Union. There, a totalizing
and bankruptperspective on progress has crumbled
because of its stifling internalcontradictions.
The urban theory implicit in the pragmatic
perspective is one of maximum feasible local control,
reducing the interventionary controls of the central
state to those of regulating the worst excesses of
large-scale capital, redistributing in block form or
even providing powers for local collection and dis-
posal of tax revenue to be spent, subject to minimum
standards, as democratic localities and/or regions
deem fit. Competitive and co-operative discourses
will have to learn to co-exist rather than remain
locked in imaginary incommunicado. To some extent,
developments in the post-Fordist economy, the
European Community (with its weakening effect
341
upon the nation-state) and the increasingly localized
nature of economic development policy are pulling
the modern city in this possibly post-modern direc-
tion. But there are furtherdevelopments, for example,
in decentralizing control of welfare and health pro-
vision that, in Britain,have been opened up by the
Thatchergovernments, but offer prefigurativepossi-
bilities of more democratic localized control than has
hitherto been the case. Tenants control of rented
housing, local education and other services has
progressive potential which has lain dormantbeneath
the old hegemony of urban managerialism.So this
perspective sees the late-twentieth century city as
increasingly cosmopolitan, diverse, fragmentary but
communicative. It recognizes that the imprint of
modernity will continue to provide the basic struc-
ture of the city but that within the interstices of that
frameworka growing pluralismof culture,economic
activity, consumption practices and processes of
control is deducible for the future.
CONCLUSIONS
The argument of this paper has been that modern
urban theory is in question. Cities can no longer
usefully be seen as systems for the provision of col-
lective consumption or be understood by virtue of
ecological metaphors. Neither can they be simply
reduced to the working out of a neo-classical rational
economic calculus.They were, in the era of Fordism,
Keynesianismandcentralizedstate managementmore
recognisably publicly-managed, localized mixed
economies, but they always consisted of much more
than that. Now, elements in modern society which
have changed to de-emphasize the domination of
state forms of management are recognisably influenc-
ing the key processes and forms expressed in the built
environment and the socio-economic relations which
it enshrouds. The main question is whether these
changes echo an epochal break in the concept of
progress which, from the Enlightenment, has been
embodied in what we call modernity.
The answer is that, to the extent that post-modern
social theory as presented here has a project or
implies a logic of action, it does not overturn that
concept of progress, it criticizes it but also indicates
the ways in which it has to be overhauled. Most
distinctly, it questions the imperialisingtendencies in
the interpretation of progress represented both in
modern urban theory and in modern cities. It ques-
tions the validity of centralized solutions being
342 PHILIPCOOKE
imposed upon diverse localities, themselves com-
posed of societies with differing interests, emphases
and requirements. In particular,post-modernism is
recognized not as a project in itself but a form of
reading for absences, a deconstruction of the ways
of seeing and acting which first developed with the
onset of early modern urban policy but which have
now themselves become exhausted and in need of
furtherdemocratization and renewal. It is, of course,
desirable that both new perspectives and the
processes they claim to have identified should be
subjected to scrutiny and critique. But equally, the
perspectives and processes which seem to be less
relevant now than earlier have to be thoroughly
re-appraised and replaced by more appropriate
understandingsand forms of regulation.
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