Extended urbanization, “disjunct fragments” and global suburbanisms

Urbanization today, now that it has become generalized, is mainly suburbanization in its manifold differentiation. As suburbanization becomes the form and suburbanism becomes the life of much of the urban revolution, we are entering an age of postsuburbanization. This means, for example, that the notion of suburbanization as dependent on one centre has to be discarded as the form and life of the global suburb take shape in a general dynamics of multiple centralities and decentralities. It includes a maturation of classical suburbia, a more splintered and fragmented urbanism. This paper reviews aspects of a Lefebvrian discussion around these issues and focuses in on the explosion and subsequent reassembly of “disjunct fragments” of the urban in a world of global suburbanisms. In so far as it challenges the traditional view of the central-peripheral urban dialectics, it intersects with debates on planetary urbanization. The paper ends with speculations on the horizontalization of sub/urban form and practice in a globalizing world.