The empty shell of the planetary: re-rooting the urban in the experience of the urbanites

This paper offers reflections on a body of work that has been produced under the label of “planetary urbanization”. This term has its roots in speculative work by French writer Henri Lefebvre in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has recently been popularized by a new generation of critical urban theorists. In this commentary, I propose that Lefebvre’s idea of planetary urbanization (and the aligned concepts “complete urbanization” and “urban society”) offer a way to think productively about post-capitalist possibilities. Making reference to early writings by Marx and Engels about communism and the end of human pre-history, I argue that planetary urbanization presents a terrain for liberation from the constraints of capitalist histories. Given that this terrain is currently defined by the domains of neoliberalism and climate change a new politics is necessary to unlock the possibilities of urban society.