Articulating the social forces of urban assemblages: social practices and their role in urban becoming

This paper revisits and revitalizes an older yet still relevant debate regarding the explanatory power and political traction of assemblage urbanism. The discussion, which unfolded across the pages of City in 2011, involved a key critique: that assemblage urbanism is too theoretically vague to clearly identify the ‘social forces’ of urban becoming—offering, in turn, limited value to those seeking to explain, interrogate, and intervene in urban realities. We address this theoretical quandary by employing Theodore Schatzki’s practice-based ontology. Following Schatzki’s lead, we articulate practices as the social forces of urban assemblages, contributing, in turn, an analytic for understanding the powers through which urban phenomena take shape. This analytic is put to work through two empirically informed vignettes on urban homelessness and the constitution of urban energy demand. These provide two different takes on how social practices underpin urban assemblages, with the rigors of performance highlighted in the first instance and constitutive chains of action emergent of multiple practices in the other. By articulating a practice-based account of the social forces of urban assemblages, we contribute to conceptual debates long at the heart of City on the power and politics of urban becoming and discussion of possibilities for intervention. The key implications of this contribution for future critical urban research are laid out.