CityReads│Urban Peripheries: To Name, or Not to Name?

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Urban Peripheries: To Name, or Not to Name?

What’s in a Name? is the first book in English to pay serious and sustained attention to the naming of the urban periphery worldwide.

Richard Harris and Charlotte Vorms. 2017. eds. What's in a Name?: Talking about Urban Peripheries，University of Toronto Press.

Source: http://www.utppublishing.com/What-s-in-a-Name-Talking-About-Urban-Peripheries.html

Around the world, people use different words to speak about the urban periphery. ‘Borgata’, exurbia,‘favela’, penurbia,‘périurbain’, and ‘suburb’ are but a few of the different terms used throughout the world that refer specifically to communities that develop on the periphery of urban centers. They are different not only in the obvious way, because of the variety of languages, but also in having widely contrasting connotations and meanings. And some people have no word at all for this space. What does this variety mean, and why should we care? Those are the questions addressed in the book, What’s in a Name? edited by Richard Harris and Charlotte Vorms. 

The title of this book is inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, in which Julie has a famous line, “What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is named "Montague”, her rival's house of Montague. She implies that the names of things do not affect what they really are.

The argument of this book, however, is to suggest that the naming of urban periphery is very important. Confucius once had a conversation with one of his disciples, Zilu, explaining why the rectification of names matters. Confucius's idea seems to be more in line with the main point of this book. Confucius states that social disorder often stems from failure to call things by their proper names, that is, to perceive, understand, and deal with reality. His solution to this was the "rectification of names". He gave an explanation to Zilu:

“A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect”.

Words qualify, divide, and classify reality. They are representations that reflect social understandings of the world, and so it is fruitful to study them as such. To study the words used to refer to urban peripheries is one means to a better understanding of the significance of urbanization, and of its very nature. In What’s in a Name? editors Richard Harris and Charlotte Vorms have gathered together experts from around the world in order to provide a truly global framework for the study of the urban periphery. Rather than view these distinct communities through the lens of the western notion of urban sprawl, the contributors focus on the variety of everyday terms that are used, together with their connotations. This volume explores the local terminology used in cities such as Beijing, Bucharest, Montreal, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Sofia, as well as more broadly across North America, Australia, Southeast Asia except Africa. What’s in a Name? is the first book in English to pay serious and sustained attention to the naming of the urban periphery worldwide. By exploring the ways in which local individuals speak about the urban periphery Harris and Vorms bridge the assumed divide between the global North and the global South.

This book asks a basic question: to what extend do the binary division between city and suburb, or the ternary division of city/countryside/something-in-between(third space), correspond to the everyday understanding of local residents in different spatio-temporal contexts?

North American and British English-speakers refer to “surburbs”; French-speakers, use banlieue, and les banlieues. Germans use stradtrand, Russans use prigorod, Arab speakers use Dahiya, Turks use gecekondu, and Chinese use jiaoqu. It is more difficult to identify a generic word in Italian or Spanish: Italians speak of periferia, sobborgo, or borgata. Spanish extrarradio or afueras. Most Indian and Iranian cities have no agreed-upon term at all.

Secondly, in places where a generic term exists – in North America, Great Britain, and France—theses words are not equivalent. While suburb in North America evokes neighborhoods of middle-class single-family homes, banlieue conjures images of high-rise social housing inhabited by poor, immigrant households. While suburb is generally positive in its popular connotations, banlieue is negative.

The vocabulary of urban experts differs form everyday speech. In China, arguably, the term jiaoqu is commonly used by experts to refer to peripheral areas, but others prefer nong cun or jinjiao nong cun. In Germany, people will use Stadtrand but not the technical terms, such as Suburbanisierung, Umlandge-meinde, or Zwischenstadt. Anglophone planners may speak of conurbations, edge cities, and exurbia.

To understand the meaning of words, we need to determine who has used them, and how and why they have done so. Seven groups are usually the most important: land developers; residents of the urban periphery; outsiders (those who don’t live in the periphery); governments; scholars; planners; and the media.

This book first develops a broad frame of reference within which local names may be understood and compared. Such a frame should consider how the naming of the urban periphery has arisen and changed, and how this matters. The remainder of the book consists of case studies that follow some aspects of the general framework. The first cluster of five case studies addressed the questions of the existence of a generic word for urban periphery. It considers the words used in two English-language settings (Australia; Canada), in a Canadian bilingual city(Montreal), in Indonesia (Java), and in a multilingual city (Mumbai). The second cluster examine words used in the low-income areas associated with the urban fringe: Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Madrid, Bucharest). The final cluster describes new urban development independently of their social profile in very diverse countries (France, Bulgaria, China).

The purpose is not simply to show how other people think about the urban fringe but to make use us all a little more self-conscious about the categories and labels we use and to question the frames of reference that gives those names meaning, together with their underlying assumptions.

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