Book Reviews

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Book Reviews
Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition by Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin (New York: Routledge, 2001) Pp. 477, $36.95 Reviewed by Charles David Jacobson This ambitious book presents a distinctive and disturbing vision of contemporary processes of urban change. In Graham and Marvins view, ideological and technological changes, market forces, and powerful economic and political actors are working in parallel to splinter urban life in profoundly antidemocratic and inegalitarian ways. Numerous vignettes illustrating processes of urban splintering reinforce the impression of malign changes afoot as do grim black and white photographs of fragmented and sterile urban landscapes from around the world. Even the very phrase splintering urbanism hints of a certain menacing sharpness. Yet the prospect presented by Graham and Marvin is not without its bright spots. Indeed, the authors very skepticism concerning the ability of top-down planners of any stripe to entirely control dynamic processes of urban change leaves them with a degree of hope as to possibilities for a more interesting, diverse, and democratic future. The books primary focus is on relationships between the construction and use of networked infrastructures (e.g., telecommunications, electric utilities, and transport systems) and contemporary processes of urban change. The authors draw on a wide range of perspectives from history and social studies of technology, expressing a particular affinity for Callon and Latours actor-network theory. Like Callon and Latour, the authors view networked infrastructures as fragile constructions requiring continuous effort to sustain their functioning. Ways in which such systems can simultaneously render people in close geographic proximity irrelevant even as they link together distant actors are also of great concern. In this regard, Graham and Marvin take seriously the implications for urban development of Latours observation that, I can be one meter away from someone in the next telephone booth, and be nevertheless more closely connected to my mother 6,000 miles away (188) . Marxist analyses of the geographical political economies of contemporary capitalism developed by David Harvey and others are also sources of inspiration. In accord with this perspective, the authors pay a great deal of attention to relationships between capitalisms need for movement and circulation of information, money, labor, and commodities and the fixed and place-bound character of the networked infrastructures on which such mobility largely depends. Graham and Marvin also share with this perspective a highly critical view of the roles played by capitalist power

Journal of Urban Technology, Volume 9, Number 3, pages 109-113. Copyright 2002 by The Society of Urban Technology . All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 1063-0732 print/ISSN: 1466-1853 online DOI: 10.1080/106307302200004431 4

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relationships in shaping the architecture of networked infrastructures and associated patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Particularly in western countries after World War II, Graham and Marvin assert, it was networked infrastructures integrative and inclusionary potentials that received the greatest emphasis. Telecommunications, transportation, and electric, gas, and other utility networks were imagined to deliver broadly similar, essential services to (virtually) everyone at similar cost across cities and regions and were assumed to function as integrators of urban spaces binding cities, regions, and nations into functioning geographical or political wholes (8). Such systems were also viewed as natural monopolies requiring forms of government ownership or regulation to ensure that they fulfilled their integrating roles. Examples of policies based on this paradigm in the United States include cross-subsidization of local telephone service so as to promote universal access, rural electrification programs, and construction of local and national highway networks. Although important ideological and physical legacies of this period survive, Graham and Marvin argue that networked infrastructures are presently being unbundled in ways that help to sustain the fragmentation of the social and material fabric of cities (33) . Factors driving this turn to splintering urbanism include reduced state support for construction and maintenance of expansive infrastructure networks in many countries, the failure of modernist ideals of comprehensive planning and infrastructure development to live up to their democratizing promise, the declining sway of notions of natural monopoly, and the opening

of many infrastructure markets to competition. As markets are liberalized, [m]ultiple providers of contestable infrastructure networks, new entrants and incumbents, build new and segment existing networks that, quite literally, bypass the least valued users, districts, and cities leaving such places to the remnants of monopoly networks while providing higher-quality, more resilient, and less costly infrastructure networks to the most valued users (176) . In parallel with this style of infrastructure development, comprehensive styles of urban planning emphasizing open patterns of circulation (e.g., grid-like arrangements of public streets) are being supplanted by planning styles centered on the creation of sealed-off premium enclaves of production, consumption, and residence. For the affluent and (literally) well connected, Graham and Marvin write, urban spaces of seduction and safety are being bundled together with advanced and highly capable premium networked infrastructure (toll highways, broadband telecommunications, enclosed quasi-private streets, malls, and skywalks, and customized energy and water services) (220) . As the affluent secede from the public realm into these highly commodified network spaces, the poor and marginalized are left behind with ever more limited access to basic public spaces and to water, power, and communication. Taken together, Graham and Marvin argue, these processes of urban splintering threaten the citys role as a center of democratic exchange, openness and circulation, and heterogeneous mixing of people and ideas. The trends are not, however, inexorable. The authors place their hopes for a better future not in a return to a modernist faith in technical expertise

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and comprehensive planning, but in the irrepressible dynamism, mixing, and sheer messiness of major cities themselves. Urban life, the authors write, is too diverse, varied, and unpredictable to be simply programmed like some computer by powerful socioeconomic or political interests, even within increasingly extreme and uneven capitalist contexts (392) . In this context, [d]emocratic resistance and social mobilization can serve to balance the secessional tendencies with more redistributive design, development, regulation, and governance strategies (397) . Indeed, in a kind of judo, some of the same international information and communication networks used to facilitate urban splintering and the creation of premium network spaces can also be used to organize citizen mobilization and organization in opposition. Reflecting Graham and Marvins own distrust of totalizing visions of any kind and the exploratory nature of their inquiry, the book ends not with a tidy conclusion but with a series of questions concerning states and networked infrastructures, the politics of splintering urbanism, and relationships between the globalization of capital and the production of urban space. This books sheer ambitiousness is a wonder to behold. Under the rubric splintering urbanism, Graham and Marvin bring together a really impressive array of theoretical perspectives and examples of superficially disparate phenomena from cities around the world. The authors deserve great credit for highlighting the central importance of infrastructure networks for urban development, for moving beyond simplistic depictions of such networks as homogenizers of cities or regions, and for thinking seriously

about relationships between the character of networked infrastructures and urban planning and development. Given the broad sweep and visually intuitive character of many of the points made, Splintering Urbanism could even serve as the basis of a provocative television documentary. Unfortunately, much of the writing in the volume itself is turgid and jargon-ridden. At least to the taste of this detail-oriented urban historian, the book also sweeps too quickly and shallowly over many of the examples presented. I also have some deeper reservations. Despite the many caveats in which the argument is nearly drowned, Graham and Marvins distinction between modernist homogeneous styles of infrastructure and urban development and postmodern splintering is over drawn. Presentday patterns of infrastructure development, in which central locations, businesses, and more affluent consumers enjoy richer connections than do others, are not so dissimilar from those of the past as they imply. Indeed with the diffusion of such technologies as cell phones in countries around the world, a case can even be made that the degree of inequality is falling rather than rising. Nor is unevenness in infrastructure development necessarily a source of urban splintering. Rather, it can be argued that the infrastructure connections in major cities play important roles in supporting the concentrated and heterogeneous mixing of people and activities idealized by Graham and Marvin. All that said, Graham and Marvin have succeeded in writing a challenging volume and in opening up some very interesting conversations for those concerned with technology and the future of cities.

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Effluent America: Cities, Industry, Energy, and the Environment by Martin V. Melosi (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001) Pp. 313, $19.95 Reviewed by Michael Greenberg For over 30 years, I have worked on current environmental health problems, beginning with a major drought in the 1960s and more recently on small brownfield sites and on the legacy of chemical and nuclear weapons in the United States. When environmental health issues arise, my colleagues and I, responding to a direct government request or to a more general request for a proposal, try to use the best theories and methods to forecast the policy implications of options. Rarely do we have an opportunity to model the big picture behind the decision we are studying. The need for a quick decision does not permit it. For this reason, I love reading the work of Martin Melosi, Joel Tarr, Sam Bass Warner, Jr., and other urban historians who have the time and skill to meticulously connect all the dots in policy formation. Effluent America is a book of three distinct parts and 12 chapters that highlights key themes in Melosis career. The introductory chapter argues that cities should not be disconnected from ecology. Melosi argues that if agriculture is part of ecosystem analysis, then so are cities. I agree. The remainder of the chapter overviews the authors work, beginning with his studies of garbage management to more recent concerns with environmental justice. Part One (Chapters 2-5) paints a portrait of pollution in a rapidly industrializing America. The author addresses industrialization, population concentration, and then dispersal from cities, industrial neighborhoods, water, air, and solid waste impacts. Part Two (Chapters 7-9) focuses on cities as technological systems. Using Houston as a case study (the author is a professor there), Melosi focuses on the political power behind choices of where and when to spend public funds for water lines, sewerage, roads, and so on. He highlights the reality that todays policy choices seriously constrain future options. My work at Department of Energy sites graphically illustrates that decisions made 50 years ago will cost $300+ billion over the next 50 years to address. Part Three (Chapters 10-12) addresses environmental reform. The first focuses on community activism. The author shows that activists began with the problems that were literally in their collective face (smoke, noise, and litter), and gradually evolved into a concern with clean water and sewerage. This chapter is followed by a review of the role sanitary engineers played in forming the city scape. Melosis point is that sanitary engineers are perceived as mere political technicians, but, in fact, they have played a critical role in molding the urban system. The final chapter is a thoughtful effort to assess the charge made by some environmental justice advocates that traditional environmental movements ignored their interests. He cautiously rejects the claim. I have a few quibbles with the book. First, the three parts are not as clearly connected as I had expected.

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Second, I have a few issues of fact. Central place theory is a useful organizing principle for dealing with interurban as well a intraurban location. The original works of Christaller and Losch describe a network of ordered developments based on distance decay that have been used to describe the geography of cities, towns, and villages in large regions as well as the distribution of stores in urban neighborhoods. Third, David Harvey is a geographer, not a sociologist. Overall, however, there are no more than a half-dozen points I would challenge. The greatest strength of the book is the organization of a mass of multidisciplinary information into coherent concepts linked to political reform and debate. More specific

strengths include Melosis literature reviews as part of the introduction to each of the three parts of the book and the offering of historical facts that resonate today (e.g., where the oxygen sag curve idea and the first interstate water protection compacts originated). Along with Joel Tarrs The Search for the Ultimate Sink , Sam Bass Warners Streetcar Suburbs, and John Duffys A History of Public Health in New York City: 1625-1866, this book will be one of those that I will not give away when I retire. This is a book for those who want to take the time to truly understand the complex of relationships among urban-industrial development, environmental externalities, and politics.