Roast, A orcid.org/0000-0003-0821-3492 (2022) THEORY FROM EMPTY LAND: Informal Commoning Outside/Within Economies and Ecologies of the Urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 46 (3). pp. 387-404. ISSN 0309-1317
Abstract
Debates over the ontology of contemporary urbanization have questioned the notion of a meaningful ‘outside’ to the urban and have called for greater attention to the socially contested construction of urban subjects and space. Ethnographic study of informal peri-urban agriculture in the rapidly urbanizing city of Chongqing in Southwest China allows for a critical examination of the everyday ecologies and economies of planetary urbanization. The state-led expansion of Chongqing since the early 2000s has created a peri-urban zone consisting of large areas of undeveloped land awaiting construction, which is utilized informally by displaced ‘urbanized’ peasants and migrant workers. The use of this ‘empty’ urban land for agriculture reveals informal practices and displaced subjects which are variously positioned as ‘outside’ or ‘within’ urban systems and values. The undeveloped land remains ecologically entangled with urban processes and is the site of a contested commoning of space which is regarded as external to urban market values. Theorizing from the kongdi (empty land) launches a novel understanding of under-studied urbanizing spaces which are positioned ambiguously outside urban governance, are under threat of rapid enclosure within urban regimes of accumulation, and spatialize the negotiation of the boundaries and meaning of the urban itself.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Urban Research Publications Limited. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Chongqing; commons; informality; planetary urbanization; urban agriculture; urban China; wasteland |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > SOG: Cities & Social Justice (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 May 2022 11:57 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:59 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/1468-2427.13097 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:187355 |