The Urban Field - (Urban Worlds) by Sami Moisio & Ugo Rossi

About the Book

This book is a critical examination of the relationship between capital and the state, and the generation of an urban governmentality centered on the economization of knowledge and technology. A rethinking of the role of contemporary urbanism in today's knowledge-intensive capitalism.

Book Synopsis

We live in an era of techno-monopoly power in which technocapitalism - through ubiquitous digital platforms - has colonized both the internet and key aspects of our everyday lives. Cities and larger urban and metropolitan environments have provided a fertile ground for the rise and rapid growth of this power. In The Urban Field, Moisio and Rossi reveal an urban monopoly capitalism supported by the "corporatized state". They critically examine the relationship between capital and the state, and the generation of an urban governmentality centred on the economization of knowledge and technology in four key sites: labour, human capital, startups and forms of life. Moisio and Rossi contend that, ultimately, the urban field is a constitutively political construct that can be enacted in a different way, no longer as a value-extraction machine but as a collective endeavour aiming at redefining established modes of economic value creation.

Review Quotes

By describing techno-monopoly capitalism, The Urban Field provides a brilliant guide-map to the current political economy of cities, which is, on the one hand, dominated by technology companies and, at the same time, inherently connected to state power. Offering an intellectual tour between a series of illuminating cases, such as the digitization of the Finnish nation-state, the labour dynamics of food couriers and delivery workers, and the transformation of Naples into a mass tourism site, the book unravels how, in the contemporary urban field, economic extraction of value goes far beyond the built environment and permeates essential aspects of everyday life. It skillfully elucidates the processes of capital accumulation from space, particularly in an era where the boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds are increasingly blurred.--Noga Keidar, postdoctoral researcher, University of Toronto and Hebrew University of Jerusalem

If you like your theory hot and your writing pithy, look no further. Moisio and Rossi deliver a trenchant account of how technology has become a tool of value extraction from cities. They tread a careful path, picking apart notions of techno-feudalism and avoiding all-too-easy fingerpointing, to instead deliver a fine-grained analysis of some of the less visible workings of the state-business nexus.--Martin Müller, Professor of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne

Moisio and Rossi offer a detailed view of states' dependence on the giants of the tech industry for visions of progress and promises of jobs while subjecting workers and users to ever greater control. They reveal the urban field to be a strategic site of value creation through tourism, monetization and precarious work - a crucial critique for both urban scholars and theorists of innovation.--Sharon Zukin, author of The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech, and the New Economy

Sami Moisio and Ugo Rossi's The Urban Field presents a cutting-edge analysis of urban political economy in the digital era. Shifting analysis away from techno-feudalism and examining the impacts of techno-monopoly capitalism on urban governance, the authors make a strong case for the corporatization of urban life and the state beginning with the first boom of digital start-ups at the end of the twentieth century. The book indicates the many ways in which national state and city governments prop up the tech firms to enable the creation and extraction of economic value to achieve the entrepreneurialization of living and privatization of governance.--Nancy Ettlinger, Professor of Critical Human Geography, Ohio State University, and author of Algorithms and the Assault on Critical Thought

In this fascinating and timely book, Moisio and Rossi articulate an original political-economic framework for understanding the interpenetration of techno-monopoly capitalism and cities. Reminiscent of key contributions (such as those of Storper & Walker, Scott, Jessop) which described and deciphered economic geographic transitions away from Fordist regulation towards neoliberal competition-driven systems, Moisio and Rossi take stock of how state-sanctioned digital monopolies are conceptualizing, creating and extracting value from (and across) the urban field - a relational space characterized by the juxtaposition of data, labour, institutions, governments, capital, and power. Broad in theoretical scope, precise and succinct in empirical exemplification, this short book masterfully makes sense of how the discourses and materialities of techno-monopoly capitalism are reconfiguring the urban field of the 2020s.--Richard Shearmur, Professor of Economic Geography, McGill University

In this sharp and critical intervention into both political economy and urban geography, Moisio and Rossi argue that our age of techno-monopoly capitalism hinges on a mode of governmentality engineered to extract value from vital urban processes and forms of life. Rather than a devolution to techno-feudalism, The Urban Field reveals an intensification, diversification, and (re)urbanization of capital accumulation, coordinated not just by monopolist corporations or venture capital investors but by a corporatized state whose logics mirror that of a tech startup.--Aaron Shapiro, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Design, Control, Predict: Logistical Governance in the Smart City

In a much needed critique of techno-monopoly capitalism and its urban ramifications, The Urban Field offers an astute political economy that parses out the role of tech companies and the state upon an array of affective social and political worlds. Drawing upon an array of theoretical interventions around the devastating powers of technocapitalism, Moisio and Rossi also offer their own unique perspectives to the urban field - a space which encompasses a range of domains including labour, human capital, startup economies and governmentality. Not only does this book illuminate how techno-monopolism functions in the day-to-day, but it also importantly helps us understand how particular moments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have led us to this contemporary conjuncture.--Erin McElroy, University of Washington, author of Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times

Combining innovative theorizing with radical critique, Sami Moisio and Ugo Rossi rethink the strategic role of cities, the stakes in transformative politics, and the meaning of the urban field in the era of technocapitalism.--Jamie Peck, Professor of Geography and Distinguished University Scholar, University of British Columbia

About the Author

Sami Moisio is Professor of Spatial Planning and Policy in the Department of Geosciences and Geography, and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Helsinki. His recent book, Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy won the 2019 Regional Studies Association Book Award.

Ugo Rossi is Professor of Political and Economic Geography at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, L'Aquila. He is the author of Cities in Global Capitalism (2017).