Cities 07

With the ever increasing speed of technology that has led to fundamental changes in society, the information technology revolution that Castells elaborates upon has had a profound effect upon the social structure of cities. Of primary importance is how this technological revolution has facilitated the rise of a global economy, which in turn has brought with it the increasing polarization among classes to the point of what Castells calls a dual city. While the idea of segregation within the urban context is hardly a new phenomenon, the catalyst that Castells is proposing gives contemporary insights into urban social stratification.

To describe the formation of this urban dichotomy, Castells cites various social movements and groups who not only change the social structure of cities but are sources of contention as to how various spaces should be used or valued. Environmentalists seek sustainable development, feminists seek updated labor policies, changes in familial division of labor, all of these factors are affecting what is expected from cities and the economic and political practices they accommodate. Included in Castells accounts of the social dualisms he sees developing are the marginalized drug culture and homeless facet, commonly relegated to the ghettos of the city. While all these groups play a role in the social dynamics of a city, Castells sets his focus primarily on the influx of immigrants into western European cities and how their presence in contrast with the older native population are what create the starkest polarization. In describing the effects of this contrast, Castells states “There follows a formation of cities made up of spatially coexisting, socially exclusive groups and functions, that live in an increasingly uneasy tension vis-á-vis each other (483). This juxtaposition of such disparate groups within one context is what creates this dual city concept. Social heterogeneity, as has been illustrated by Wirth and others, is not enough of a reason for this dramatic segregation. The cause of this urban dualism is what Castells calls the “Informational City”, characterized by a predominance of the “space of flows” over the “space of places”.

This concept of a space of flows is somewhat of an abstract concept, but Castells does his best to describe it when he says “By space of flows I refer to the system of exchanges of information, capital, and power that structures the basic processes of societies, economies and states between different localities, regardless of localization” (483). With this synchronization of the institutions of the state and the economy, the maintenance of the interconnectivity of these institutions has superceded the importance of the industrial function in cities, which in many “northern” countries has been migrated to the cheaper land values of the suburbs long ago. While in many major American cities the professional class have gone into, as Castells calls it, “suburban exile”, the European bourgeoisie have laid claim to rehabilitated sectors of the city (481). This refusal to allow the dangers of the city to drive many of the, again to use Castells’ less than favorable language, “weak and fearful American elite” into the suburbs seems to be part of the logic behind the impetus of many bourgeois suburban dwellers to return to the city as evidenced for example by the recent proliferation of condos in Minneapolis. This desire for a neighborhood that segregates itself from the surrounding city is where much of the contention arises between lower class citizens and the professional elite in how various spaces will be constituted. Furthermore, since the work of this new professional elite tends to work towards global ends, there is a significant disconnect between the interests of this class with those of the working class who are at a significant disadvantage to have a say in the forces that significantly shape some facets of their lives.

What Castells purports as a solution to this disconnect is to utilize the information technology that has become the economic engine of the informational city to enable local governments to become better connected to their citizens. This conflation of technology with citizen involvement is what Castells sees as how local governments can work to repair this gap between globally minded professionals and locally minded working class citizens. While this sounds like a good idea, Castells is forgetting to take into account that the social capital of the professional elite, in this case their higher degree of access to and experience with the technology, would still place them at an advantage to the working class, hence limiting how effective this technique could be. While I cannot think of any sort of alternative of how to stop the juggernaut of globalization, Castells’ idea seems riddled with flaws that extend beyond the obvious one I touched upon. Nevertheless, he has definitely taken the urban social stratification issue of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and demonstrated how it has evolved into its modern forms.