Book reviews

407

Area

Vol. 39 No. 3, pp. 406–412, 2007ISSN 0004-0894 © The Authors.Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007

by farming. Other initiatives considered include commu-nity gardens, the ‘healthy city’ movement that emphasisespolicies to create healthy environments for city dwellers,emissions trading, the generalisation of public transport,greenways, brownfield regeneration and smart growth.

These are interesting and valuable practices that alsoraise awareness and point towards lifestyle changes. How-ever, Boone and Modarres appear generally ambivalenttowards them, a feeling reinforced by their view that the‘demons of nationalism and capitalism have created manyof the problems we face and surely cannot be the solutionsto them’ (p. 76). However, the initiatives and solutions thatthey review and propose fall short of tackling these funda-mental structures. Perhaps what the book is lacking is amore theoretical understanding of what the structuralcauses of economic and environmental crises are.

An emerging Marxist urban political ecology body ofwork has highlighted that the transformation of nature andthe environment are in fact part of a capitalist system ofproduction and labour relations that are in turn embeddedin ‘specific social relations of control, ownership andappropriation’ (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003, 905). EricSwyngedouw, a leading voice within this perspective,views cities as ‘giant socio-environmental processes, per-petually transforming the socio-physical metabolism ofnature’ (Swyngedouw 2006, 37). Nature, according to him,is ‘as much part of the politics of life as any other socialprocess’ (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003, 905). As such,it is the excavation of this ‘socio-ecological metabolism’and their ‘associated power relations’ (Sywngedouw andHaynen 2003, 915) that needs to be prioritised in academicanalysis. Nature cannot be separated from the capitalistproduction and accumulation processes – it is at the heartof them. This book has provided useful evidence in thisdirection but more research of this kind is needed to worktowards radical solutions.

Sara GonzalezUniversity of Leeds

References

Swyngedouw

E

2006 Metabolic urbanization: the making ofcyborg cities in

Heynen

N, Kaika

M and Swyngedouw

E

eds

The nature of cities – urban political ecology and thepolitics of urban metabolism

Routledge, London 21–40

Swyngedouw

E and Heynen

N C

2003 Urban political ecology,justice and the politics of scale

Antipode

35 898–918

Cosmopolitan urbanism

edited by

Jon Binnie, JulianHolloway, Steven Millington and Craig Young

London: Routledge, 2006, 259 pp, £23.99 paperback ISBN0 415 34492 1

This volume draws together a wide range of reflectionson the meaning and ideals of cosmopolitanism. It achieves

this in relation to diverse case studies of the waycosmopolitanism is deployed and received by national andmunicipal governments, specific social groups and themarket, in a cities context. The editors’ extensive introductionis framed around key contemporary academic and policydebates, usefully highlighting the ongoing contestationamong definitions and practices. A number of definitions ofcosmopolitanism are provided, drawing on a wide-rangingliterature, although lacking a historical grounding. The firstdefinition is of cosmopolitanism as an intellectual andaesthetic desire for difference. Against this essentially eliteconsumer perspective, the authors highlight the differentattitudes, needs and aptitudes of producers for whomcosmopolitanism is an economic necessity. Contrasting tothese two forms of

habitus

is the notion of cosmopolitanismas a moral project of ‘global citizenship’; a rejection ofthe nation-state, which itself sits in tension with politicaland entrepreneurial efforts to harness ‘the cosmopolitancity’ as a resource.

A definition of cosmopolitan

urbanism

is more elusive;none is proffered, and it remains unclear what new ideathis book advances about cosmopolitanism or urbanism.One partial definition develops from the editors’ conten-tion that cosmopolitanism is not pure ideology: it is insteadgrounded and concentrated in specific urban sites. Through-out the book, cosmopolitanism is shown to be a character-istic of confined (even controlled) enclaves, not wholecities. The editors link this very closely with gentrification,without seeming overly concerned that this rather limits thebook’s purview of cosmopolitan spaces (primarily regener-ated inner-city cultural and ethnic quarters, sometimes sub-urban shopping streets and peripheral housing estates) andpractices (mostly restaurants, shopping, nightclubs, housebuying). Nevertheless, cosmopolitanism is presented assomething more than spectacle. Several chapters empha-sise the way that embodied, social experiences, such asfood, religion and sex, are important to the production,communication and consumption of different identities.The book also foregrounds that people experience cosmo-politanism through their economic exchanges. A thirddefining precept is that ‘once grounded, “cosmopolitan-ism” is a highly contested concept, intersecting with themultiply contested politics of class, gender and sexuality,race and ethnicity, and power in the city’ (p. 22). This isless useful, emphasising that cosmopolitanism is shaped

by

city life, rather than being an inherent characteristic

of

citylife. It hints too at an unanswered question posed byBridge: ‘the degree to which cosmopolitanism is or is nottied up with cities’ (p. 55).

The collection’s case studies span many cultures andlandscapes. Contributions address the tensions of cosmo-politanism in Britain and the most developed common-wealth territories, where gentrification confronts multiculturalurban immigration. The selection should find a receptiveaudience across this geographic spread. Bodaar’s chapteron Amsterdam suggests that immigration policy, urbanredevelopment and governance in the Netherlands have

408

Book reviews

Area

Vol. 39 No. 3, pp. 406–412, 2007ISSN 0004-0894 © The Authors.

Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007

some resonance with the British post-colonial context, andalso suggests the wider relevance of the theme for Germany,Belgium and France. The fit is less good with Haylett’s US-centred chapter. The detail of her study of neoliberal socialrelations in Houston, ‘an apparently “cosmopolitan” city’(p. 188), merely demonstrates the emptiness of the label inthat context, and says little about the substance of cosmo-politanism, its forms, policies or consequences.

The book’s three main sections focus on definitions ofcosmopolitan urbanism, its consumption and its produc-tion. Sandercock opens Part One with a strongly normativeperspective. Drawing on Amin (2002), she observes thatmeaningful cosmopolitan encounters and the developmentof tolerance to urban difference are most feasible in mun-dane, ‘micro-public’ sites where different people necessar-ily interact in their everyday lives, such as workplaces,schools, sports clubs, neighbourhood centres and commu-nity gardens. Few empirical chapters in the book addressurbanism in this detail. Iveson’s theorisation reaches backto Kant’s notion of hospitality, an ideal of the cosmopolitancity as a refuge for strangers. He emphasises that urbanitesare essentially strangers, with shared fates but not necessar-ily shared values. Bridge’s chapter is more empirical andcautionary, critiquing ‘the thin multiculturalism of gentrifi-ers which is limited to diverse cuisine and neighbourhoodaesthetics’ (p 59). He illustrates how gentrification embracescosmopolitanism strategically, often resisting and excludingdifference.

Part Two spans far and wide in its depiction of forms ofcosmopolitan consumption, and features a great variationin modes of research and writing and critical stance.Latham’s chapter on Auckland presents cosmopolitanisa-tion as a process where local lifestyles are influenced byforeign practices, landscapes, objects and symbols: a ratherspectacular notion of cosmopolitanism – what about inter-cultural social interactions? Germaine and Radice providea nicely detailed account of how cosmopolitan consump-tion of ‘ethnic’ cuisine in one Montreal neighbourhoodhas helped foster broader acceptance of otherness andultimately stimulated active community-building. This isperhaps the book’s clearest illustration of Amin’s groundingof cosmopolitanism in mundane ‘micro-publics’. Brown’sstudy of ‘(post)gay’ cosmopolitan space in London’s Spital-fields argues that this middle-class leisure zone camou-flages an openness to sexual difference which cuts acrossthe area’s ethnic and class distinctions. Tan and Yeoh dis-cuss how contemporary Singaporean literature reflects theaspirations and practices of Singaporeans, both cosmopoli-tans and ‘heartlanders’; they also discuss novelists’ descrip-tions of spaces. Overall, this section remains rather tooconcerned with theory: to give the book real purpose, amuch more detailed account of both the sociology andthe physical environments of cosmopolitan urbanism mighthave been provided.

Part Three focuses on interventions by governments,market forces and non-profit organisations to shape cosmo-politan urbanism. Bodaar examines the Dutch state’s strate-

gic use of multiculturalism to manage increasing differenceand to market urban renewal, and its contestation on theground by working-class people. She highlights that theethnicity and race of residents in Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer(who engage with otherness as an everyday necessity)contrasts sharply with that of the policymakers, adminis-trators and consultants who are transforming it and theelite college graduates and foreigners who come to con-sume its exoticism. In a similar vein, Haylett notes:‘cosmopolitanism is easily claimed from transitory middle-class contact with “Others” in their service capacity as news-agents, cleaners and waitresses, or from visual contact with“Others” who make up the colourful backdrop to citylife . . . in gentrifying areas’ (p. 193). She argues the ideologyof cosmopolitanism overstates the significance of raceand ethnicity in cultural divisions, and ignores the circum-stances of the urban working class. However her study ofHouston neglects the book’s core theme: engagement withcultural difference. Chan critiques Birmingham’s entrepre-neurial planning policies which explicitly pursue cosmo-politanism. He provides a refreshing change by forgoingin-depth theoretical discussion in favour of detailed analysis.Nevertheless, he illuminates a key theoretical point fromDerrida, indebted to Kant, by highlighting that Birmingham’shospitality toward minorities is not unconditional: profes-sional, educated, wealthy Chinese migrants are defined asassets, poor refugees aren’t; difference is proscribed.

The final chapter reproduces an earlier article (Binnieand Skeggs 2004). While such positioning defers to the newwork, it underplays the intellectual debt the volume owesthis paper. Their exploration of the constantly-unfoldingproduction and consumption of cosmopolitan space,social practices and identity in Manchester’s Gay Villageprovides the intellectual framework for this volume, and iscited by several other chapters. The editors have allowedsubstantial overlap in contributors’ lengthy definitions andtheorisations: key quotes and citations are often repeated.The book often seems to walk in the shadow of earlier work.Judicious editing might have reduced duplication andencouraged more distinctly varied and/or place-specificconceptualisations of cosmopolitanism. Whilst the book’sgeographical scope is good, and the material quite engag-ing, conceptually it mostly consolidates existing knowledgerather than advancing a new central theme.

Quentin StevensUniversity College London

References

Amin

A

2002 Ethnicity and the multicultural city: livingwith diversity

Report for the Department of Transport,Local Government and the Regions

University of Dur-ham, Durham

Binnie

J and Skeggs

B

2004 Cosmopolitan knowledge andthe production and consumption of sexualized space:Manchester’s gay village

Sociological Review

52 39–61