Exopolis

Definition

The Exopolis is Edward Soja's synthetic name for the postmetropolis as a restructured urban form — the third of his six discourses. The prefix exo- (outside) carries three charges: the growth of "outer" cities; the rising importance of "exogenous forces shaping cityspace in an age of globalization" ("Perhaps never before, short of military invasion, has endogenous development and localized synekism been as intensely affected by global constraints and opportunities"); and a hint of the "end of" — "the ex-city, the rise of cities without the traditional traits of cityness" (Soja 2000, p. 250). The Exopolis is Soja's "recombinant synthesis and extension, a critical thirding, of the many oppositional processes and dualized arguments that have shaped the general discourse on urban form": "The composite Exopolis can be metaphorically described as 'the city turned inside-out,' as in the urbanization of the suburbs and the rise of the Outer City. But it also represents 'the city turned outside-in,' a globalization of the Inner City that brings all the world's peripheries into the center" (p. 250) — decentering and recentering, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, "continuing sprawl and intensified urban nucleation, increasing homogeneity and heterogeneity, socio-spatial integration and disintegration."

Its empirical vocabulary: megacities as "discontinuous constellations of spatial fragments, functional pieces, and social segments" (Castells, quoted p. 235) — globally connected yet locally disconnected; Outer Cities and postsuburbia (the urbanization of the suburbs; "the metropolis inverted"); Edge Cities (Garreau's office-and-mall galaxies, Southern California holding the largest count); the jobs–housing imbalance as the Exopolis's revealing mismatch; and the stranded "off-the-edge cities" (Moreno Valley, Palmdale, Lancaster) where anticipatory growth poles failed — the "middle-class implosion" of two-hour commutes, foreclosures, and domestic despair. Soja's historical correction runs through Greg Hise: the Fordist metropolis was itself built by "dispersed nucleation or citybuilding," "most often highly planned and plotted," its demand "not as much from households as for labor" (quoted p. 241) — continuities that complicate any clean postmetropolitan break. The Exopolis's terminus is the postscript's chilling line: "Suddenly, everywhere is Pomona" (p. 401).

Key Thinkers

• Edward W. Soja — the concept's author: "Exopolis as synthesis" (pp. 250–251); the Orange County case in Thirdspace ch. 8 and "Inside Exopolis" (1992).
• Manuel Castells (referenced, not paged — see log) — the megacity as "discontinuous constellation"; "globally connected and locally disconnected."
• Deyan Sudjic — The 100 Mile City (1992): "the industrial city finally shook off the last traces of its nineteenth century self"; the galactic form.
• Joel Garreau (referenced, not paged — see log) — Edge City (1991): the five criteria, the optimistic frontier envisioning.
• Peter O. Muller & Jon Teaford, Rob Kling, Spencer Olin & Mark Poster (referenced, not paged — see log) — the Outer City and postsuburban literatures the discourse consolidates.
• Greg Hise (referenced, not paged — see log) — Magnetic Los Angeles: dispersed nucleation, demand for labor, planned citybuilding — the historical correction.

Related Concepts

• edge-city — the Exopolis's most visible landmark-form (Garreau's trademarked term).
• post-suburbia — the Outer City's catchall name; the Exopolis's residential fabric.
• implosion-explosion-dialectic — the inside-out/outside-in dialectic the Exopolis concretizes.
• urban-sprawl — the term the Exopolis supersedes: "a process that can no longer be simply described as sprawl" (p. 242).
• polycentrality — the multi-nodal form of the exopolitan region.
• planetary-suburbanization — the process reading of the same form.
• metropolarities — the social mosaic the Exopolis's form interlaces with.
• new-urbanism — the "simulating the New Urbanism" register: hypersimulations marketed into the Outer and Inner Cities.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Postmetropolis (Soja 2000) — chapter 8, "Exopolis: The Restructuring of Urban Form": megacities (pp. 235–238), Outer Cities/postsuburbia (pp. 238–242), Edge Cities (pp. 243–246), City Lite (pp. 246–248), the New Urbanism simulation (pp. 248–250), Exopolis as synthesis (pp. 250–251), and the Los Angeles tour from the New Downtown to the off-the-edge cities (pp. 251–263).

Source Support linking rule: All entries in this section must be wikilinks to source note pages in wiki/source-notes/ using the source-notes/ path prefix. Never link to raw files — raw files are not wiki pages.

• source-notes/baudrillard-1994-simulacra-and-simulation

Open Questions

• Is the Exopolis a form, a process, or a condition of nameability — Soja enters a "naming game" of competing metaphors (megacity, 100 Mile City, metropolis inverted, galactic metropolis); does the proliferation of names itself describe the form?
• Soja's off-the-edge cities (Moreno Valley, Palmdale) are the Exopolis's failures — does the concept need a pathology register (the stranded "anticipatory" growth poles) as robust as its success stories?
• What is the exopolitan interior: the downtown "archipelago of enclaves" (Toy Town's night-only sprinklers against the homeless) is the Exopolis's most distilled room-scale case — does the wiki's interior cluster have a discourse for the exopolitan interior?