Restructuring-Generated Crisis

Definition

Restructuring-generated crisis is Edward Soja's terminal thesis of Postmetropolis: the claim that the postmetropolitan transition has passed from a period in which crises generated restructuring into a period in which restructuring itself generates the crises. The shift: "What has for the past thirty years been describable as a complex process of crisis-generated restructuring may now be more cogently understood as the beginning of a period of multiplying crises emanating directly from the new urbanization processes themselves" (p. 348). The postscript states it at full strength: "What was happening in 1992… may very well have been a profound local turning point, marking with other events before and after a shift from a period of crisis-generated restructuring to the onset of a new era of restructuring-generated crises. In other words, the full-grown postmetropolis has reached a stage when it appears to be exploding under the weight of its newnesses. Those same innovative practices and restructured urban spatialities that proved most successful in restoring robust economic growth and in effectively controlling social unrest after the 1960s are now showing signs of disturbing dysfunctionality" — the six discourses' subworlds have "moved from being solutions to become part of the problem" (p. 397).

The book's crises are catalogued discourse by discourse: the downturn of postfordism (the defense-led region's collapse, the bimodal labor market's continued bipolarization, the jackpot economy's "upward flow of wealth"); too fulsome globalization (the overburdened multicultural economy, the anti-immigrant backlash, "the first World City exploding from its too fulsome globalization," p. 401); "Suddenly everywhere is Pomona" (the off-the-edge cities' middle-class implosion reaching the whole Exopolis); repadded white bunkers (the paramilitary nativist crescent from Simi Valley to Camp Pendleton); deconstructed modes of regulation (the police failing at Florence and Normandie; the subversive counter-simulation of the Reginald Denny video); and Simgovernment in crisis (Rebuild LA as "a hollow triumph of neoliberalism," the "game of Simgovernment in which models of the real substituted for the real itself," p. 406). The counterweight is the book's second "new beginning": the struggles for spatial justice and regional democracy.

Key Thinkers

• Edward W. Soja — the concept's author: the thesis stated in chapter 6's closing question ("have we moved from a crisis-generated restructuring to a restructuring-generated crisis?", p. 175) and the postscript's full argument.
• Mike Davis (referenced, not paged — see log) — the apocalyptic precursor: City of Quartz as "prophetic in its apocalyptic warnings"; Ecology of Fear's escalation.
• David Harvey — the crisis-theory root: overaccumulation, the spatial fix, "The Urban Process under Capitalism."
• Ernest Mandel / Joseph Schumpeter (referenced, not paged — see log) — the long-wave lineage the thesis inverts.
• Manuel Castells (referenced, not paged — see log) — the "wild city" (la ville sauvage) predecessor-concept for the unstable cityspace.

Related Concepts

• crisis-generated-restructuring — the predecessor mechanism this concept dialectically negates.
• postmetropolis — the condition in crisis.
• crisis-generated-restructuring — the predecessor mechanism this concept dialectically negates.
• postmetropolis — the condition in crisis; the wiki's prior crisis register is Kaika's "Architecture and Crisis" (2010).
• carceral-archipelago, simulation-hyperreality — the twin "peaks of the postmodern/postfordist mode of social and spatial regulation" whose crisis 1992 marked (p. 403).
• spatial-justice — the response-side.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Postmetropolis (Soja 2000) — the first statement (p. 175), the Justice Riots as trigger (Part III), and the postscript's "New Beginnings I: Postmetropolis in Crisis" (pp. 396–406): postfordism's downturn, globalization's overburden, "Suddenly everywhere is Pomona," the white bunkers, the deconstructed regulation, and Simgovernment in crisis.

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.

Open Questions

• Is 1992 a genuine period boundary or a symptomatic flare — Soja hedges ("may very well have been a profound local turning point"); what would confirm the restructuring-generated-crisis reading against the alternative that the post-1970 restructuring simply failed?
• The thesis predates 2008 — do the financial crisis and its aftermath fit the six crises Soja catalogs (the "too fulsome globalization" crisis reads presciently), or has a second-order restructuring (financialization) generated a further crisis-type the concept must extend to?
• The concept names a shift in the mode of regulation (from crisis-generated to restructuring-generated) — does an architectural equivalent exist: buildings and interiors produced as solutions that became part of the problem (the wiki's obsolescence and adaptive-reuse cluster)?