Should Differential Space have a Place in Planning Theory?
Beyond Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad

2nd Planning Theory Conference
University of the West of England
21-22 June 2012

This is a summary of a paper given at the above conference.

[to reveal the production of space] We should have to study not only the history of space, but also the history of representations along with that of their relationships - with each other, with practice, and with ideology.
History would have to take in not only the genesis of these spaces but also, and especially, their interconnections, distortions, displacements, mutual interconnections, and their links with the spatial practice of the particular society…
(Lefebvre 1991: 42, The Production of Space, Blackwell)

From a less pessimistic standpoint, it can be shown that abstract space harbours specific contradictions. Such spatial contradictions derive in part from the old contradictions thrown up by historical time… Thus, despite - or rather because of - its negativity, abstract space carries within itself the seeds of a new kind of space. I shall call that new space ‘differential space’, because inasmuch as abstract space tends towards homogeneity… a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it accentuates difference. (Lefebvre 1991: 52)

Abstract

In this paper I argue that it is rather unfortunate planning theorists have, with a few notable exceptions, tended to ignore the potential contributions that Henri Lefebvre’s ideas regarding the production of space can make to planning theory. In particular, I argue that Lefebvre’s concept of differential space could provide a powerful focus for planners’ conceptual approaches to the creation and enhancement of public space. Rather than simply complaining about the privatisation, loss or corruption of ‘public’ space, we should appreciate the potentialities inherent in the production of differential space through the contestations that can occur in the creation of a more fair and just society in asserting ‘the right to the city’. What might be called ‘strong’ differential space: the spaces of politicised appropriation and the assertion of rights to the city, insinuates itself to a constant dialectical struggle through elements of the spatial triad. This paper provides a snapshot of ongoing research based mainly on archival sources, interviews, visual data and observation.

Urban space according to Lefebvre is not a neutral container it is a social construct. It is created through social relations which he characterised as a triad spaces: spatial practice, representations of space, and spaces of representation. Both researchers who engaged with Lefebvre’s work particularly those who pursue empirical research, tend to work with the concept of the spatial triad which has become well-known over the decades. However, Lefebvre is ambivalent about differential space, associating it with a utopian post-capitalist world, “on the horizon” produced by social revolution that will result in a planet-wide space of “transformed everyday life open to myriad possibilities” (Lefebvre 1991: 422-23) but he also detects differential space more prosaically in the immediacy of Brazil’s favelas and in 1960s Paris. The teleological nature of Lefebvre’s historical dialectic in which an inevitable transition unfolds, from the absolute space of nature to capitalist abstract space, finally reaching utopian differential space, has been observed several times. Rob Shields interprets differential space like Lefebvre as post capitalist society and transformed everyday space. Andy Merrifield declaref only half jokingly that the project of differential space can begin this afternoon through academics reclaiming our own workspace, by giving a nod to disruption rather than cooptation, a nod to real difference rather than cowering conformity.

Differential space is possible partly because under the conditions of neocapitalism land and property is abandoned periodically by capital interests and the state. This withdrawal from space occurs continually in urban areas even in the centre of cities. Abandoned urban land is seen in a variety of positive light including the opportunities it engenders for ‘natural’ space wildlife habitats. Although the contention by some that abandonment and vacancy are simply stages on the road, perhaps a long road, to renewal is more dubious. In the UK and other countries capital and state abandonment of space is associated with the cyclic, sharp economic crises of capital and with more long term structural changes in the economy in the fields of for example, manufacturing industry and transport infrastructure. From his Marxist perspective Lefebvre highlights the potential for ordinary users of space to seize new rights to urban space and produce differential space from abandoned abstract space:

An existing space may outlive its original purpose and the raison d’être which determines its forms, functions, and structures; it may thus in a sense become vacant, and susceptible of being diverted, reappropriated and put to a purpose quite different from its initial use. (Lefebvre 1991: 167, emphasis in original)

In addition to what might be called ‘utopian socialist’ differential space, Lefebvre speaks of another kind arising from what might be called the ‘here-and-now’ contestations and bodily “re-appropriation” of city space. An example in 1969 was the take over by Parisian students and others of the wholesale produce markets of Paris, Halles Centrales, which were “transformed into a gathering-place and a scene of permanent festival” (Ibid), that is a ludic space of play rather than work. Lefebvre presents a contradictory categorisation of ludic space suggesting at one point that it is a vast counter-space that escapes the control of the established order (Ibid: 383) only to affirm also that the space of the leisure industry, through commodification is a victory of neocapitalism. However, leisure space bridges the gap between spaces of work and spaces of enjoyment and fun (Ibid: 385). It is therefore “the very epitome of contradictory space” hosting exuberant new potentials.

Iain Borden is one of the few British researchers to deploy Lefebvre’s differential space concept in empirical research. He sought to deconstruct skateboarding’s history and differential space arguing that the temporary appropriation of space even for a matter of hours is a useful tactic but is not full blown, which implies ‘ownership’. Co-optation as Lefebvre calls it is therefore more likely to be tolerated by powerful social groups (e.g. Iain Borden). Differential spaces of temporary appropriation are documented in comparative research focused on abandoned city space in Berlin (railway workshop), Brussels (railway station) and Helsinki (warehouse) (Groth and Corijn). Theirs is a sophisticated insightful understanding of here-and-now differential space:

… it is a space created and dominated by its users from the basis of its given conditions. It remains largely unspecified as to its functional and economic rationality, thus allowing for a wide spectrum of use which is capable of integrating a high degree of diversity, and stays open for change…. a kind of ‘urbanity’ is produced in which the ‘lived’ and the contradictions that constitute urban life are nurtured, their deliberate juxtaposition allowing for a more complex vision of development than is evident in their immediate urban surroundings or in the unidimensional planning proposals to which these areas are subject. (Groth and Corijn 2005)

Differential space seems not to be bestowed on city dwellers through the largesse of landowners or the state; it has to be appropriated through active assertion of rights to urban space. Lefebvre makes this clear through the relationships he enunciates between differential space and the right the city. His thoughts on the right, or rather, rights to the city were written up presciently in 1968 just before the Paris uprisings in May of that year. By implication the right to the city includes individuals’ access to public space but it additionally it encompasses collective access, needs for work, security, certainty, adventure, work, similarity, difference, isolation and encounter:

The right to the city cannot be conceived of as a simple visiting right or as a return to traditional cities. It can only be formulated as a transformed and renewed right to urban life. (Lefebvre 1996: 158, emphases in original)

The right to the city manifests itself as a superior form of rights: rights to freedom, to indiviualization in socialiszation, to habitat and to inhabit. The right to the oeuvre, to participation and appropriation (clearly distinct from the right to property), are implied in the right to the city. (Ibid: 173, emphases in original)

The city as oeuvre, a complex totality, a work, is a key Lefebvrian construct. Since the city/urban is a collective continuous work in progress, it follows that all people across the great heterogeneity of city dwellers have the right to participate and the right to spatial justice. Since 1968 the concept of the right to the city has been in constant evolution around the world and urban citizenship is seen as practical rights involved with “articulating, claiming and renewing group rights in and through the appropriation and creation of spaces in the city” (Isin 2000). In 2004 in Quito a group of NGOs, Social Forum of the Americas, proposed the World Charter of the Right to the City which was refined at the Barcelona World Urban Forum 2004. Appropriations of space by local people have been documented recently in many cities, for example in Los Angeles. Soja highlights how some of the non-profit organisations leading the LA ‘right to the City’ campaign draw on the ideas in Lefebvre’s 1968 book, Le Droit a La Ville. Fernandez is much quoted for an essay which explores Brazil’s attempts to enshrine legally right to the city principles for urban dwellers. UN-Habitat following Fernandez argues that the right to the city involves:

• Liberty, freedom and the benefit of the city life for all
• Transparency, equity and efficiency in city administrations
• Participation and respect in local democratic decision making
• Recognition of diversity in economic, social and cultural life
• Reducing poverty, social exclusion and urban violence

Rather like the right to the city, differential space can be seen as a grand post capitalist epoch or a call to immediate action at the local scale. Although the teleological prediction of forthcoming world-wide differential space has not been fulfilled yet, I draw on the following approaches to differential space in realising the empirical analyses below:

- Lefebvre (1991: 52) space which “accentuates differences”
- Borden’s “tolerated” skateboarding
- Groth and Corijn’s “indeterminate spaces”
- Kolb’s “complex local places”

For a number of years I have been researching the impacts of urban planning and regeneration initiatives on the creation and enhancement of urban public space in Manchester in the 1980s and 90s, particularly in the Castlefield area on the edge of the city centre. It is clear from archival data and interviews that the Manchester city Council planners and the planners at the central Manchester Urban Development Corporation (1988-96) sought to transform the Castlefield area from an area of largely run down and increasingly derelict industrial space. The transformation they envisaged was based on the creation of post-industrial urban space consisting of private sector residential apartments, offices and studio space, bars and restaurants and attractive canal side environments. To a large extent this is precisely what they achieved but I argue in the process they also created differential space. That is, they created urban public spaces which are conducive to appropriation for purposes of political expression, political protest, and the bodily performance in public of still marginalised identities around sexuality.

In seeking to redevelop urban public space and in abandoning urban space; public and private institutions it seems produce inadvertently the potential for differential space. In tardy or rapid reactions to this potential, collective politicised action seizes opportunities to appropriate urban space for its use value, whether ludic or politically vibrant. Whether on a permanent basis running into years or on a temporary basis of months, days or hours, such appropriations are important for revealing the immanent vulnerabilities of abstract space. A theoretically robust critical appreciation of the production of urban space of use for planning, requires a careful engagement with the histories of the elements of Lefebvre‘s spatial triad. Such analyses will elevate diverse social urban public space theoretically, politically and practically to the status of one of the prime desired outcomes of the production of space.

You can read a full account of this ongoing research by following the links below:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rptp/2009/00000010/00000002/art00004

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305900613000524