Place Matters: Spatial Implications of Post-Metropolitan Transition

This contribution analyses two assumptions discussed in the literature on post-metropolitan transition and regional planning, taking some representations of the city in contemporary art and architecture as suggestion (that is, Malevich, Le Corbusier, Webber, Latour). The first assumption states the power of globalization processes to overcome the resistance of places and territories. In this view, the world is finally considered flat, homogeneous and indistinct. Territorial policies thus take an isotropic nature, “one-size-fits-all”, blind to urban and regional specificities. The second assumption develops a place-based approach: the territory is regarded as rough, anisotropic, unpredictable, “hilly”. Accordingly, urban and territorial policies take a diversified nature that recognizes spatial, social and cultural differences. Building on some recent research contributions on post-metropolitan transition within an economic and socio-spatial changing environment (Soja, Storper, McCann, Sassen), this contribution interprets the regional urbanization processes as an interplay between “streams and levees” (borrowing Benton MacKaye’s definition), and “fixity and motion” (following a line of research going from David Harvey to Christian Schmid). This interpretation is suggested as a new way to supersede the dualistic nature of the aforementioned assumptions. Finally, some spatial implications on the design of regional policies are briefly analysed.