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[연구논문] Pace and place: Resilience in an age of urban and theoretical churn

작성일: 2026.01.08

수정일: 2026.02.23

작성자: 총관리자

조회수: 87

Change has been of longstanding conceptual interest to geographers. From Harvey’s (1989) all-encompassing ‘time–space compression’ to its critique via Massey’s (1993) ‘power-geometry’ and May and Thrift’s (2001) ‘timespace’, the pace of change in/through the materialities of place has been the fulcrum of a series of debates. While Harvey (1989) argued that globalization had significantly accelerated the pace of life and the ensuing compression of places, Massey (1993) rightly noted that the process was necessarily uneven, in that “different social groups and different individuals are placed in very distinct ways in relation to these flows and interconnections” (1993: 61). This opens up considerations of different speeds but also that some places are more open and thus ‘faster’ than more passed-over and ‘slower’ places.

We are arguably experiencing another bout of accelerated change and ‘creative destruction’ directly linked to the fallout from the 2008 crisis, particularly acute in the urban (Roy, 2009, Braun, 2014, Brenner and Schmid, 2015). The increased pace is the outcome of a conjuncture of forces unleashed since 2008, in which “transience predominated over permanence in many aspects of social and political life, ending the period of neoliberal triumphaslism” (Brown, forthcoming: 16), engendering volatile mixes of government-induced austerity (Peck, 2012), overnight gentrification of once-backwater neighborhoods, and opportunistic global scanning by the 1% for safe haven investment (DeVerteuil, 2015). Wyly (2015) captured this over-valorization by noting that “urban assets – their real-estate markets, their education institutions, their ‘human capital’ – are all being mobilized more aggressively, more creatively, and more rapidly in the pursuit of endless compound growth and capital accumulation” (2015: 2533). These urban assets are increasingly in private hands, and their hyper-commodification has put greater stress on a variety of resources – think of how the dramatic rise of AirBnb from San Francisco to Barcelona has removed thousands of rental housing units, reflecting the expectation that city materialities are transient, flexible, temporary and increasingly disposable.

In this critical review, I propose that resilience offers not only insights into the accelerated pace of post-2008 urban change (DeVerteuil, 2015), but also acts as a potential bulwark against the ‘pop-up’ geographies that seemingly mark this current age, performing a much-needed rebalancing toward ideas around slowness of pace and defending vulnerable built environment and much-needed resources – after all, “if…acceleration is a relative concept one cannot have a speeding-up without also having a slowing-down” (May and Thrift, 2001: 19; see also Shaw, 2001). Resilience can be defined as:

“the capacity to bounce back to some degree of stability and previous identity after [a] shock; and…perhaps showing some adaptability and capacity for innovation…resilience shifts attention from risk and vulnerability to something more positive and prospective, on analyzing the capacity of people (social resilience) and places (spatial resilience) to anticipate, persist with, adapt to and minimize the damage caused by change, risk and adversity”.

DeVerteuil, 2015: 8

This minimization forces geographers to be more aware of and concerned with the passage of time, in terms of change versus no change, and the pace of said change. More specifically, the act of resilience can slow down the frenetic and not always welcome change to urban environments and uses. Using London as the case study, I will illustrate just such a scenario. However, this critical review is more than just an empirical exercise – I conclude by deploying (conceptual) resilience as a way to question the (equally) frenetic theory-building that has been evolving – particularly in urban geography and urban studies – in lockstep with this accelerated pace of urban change, but perhaps at the cost of eschewing previous theory and sustained empirical validation.

Before exploring the pace-place-resilience relationship, it is worthwhile clarifying some key conceptual premises for resilience (DeVerteuil, 2015). I can position resilience between the binarizing radical viewpoint that sees it as inherently sinister and conservative, propping up an inequitable status quo and used as a pretence to cast off needy places, and the more post-structuralist approach that sees it as a ‘empty signifier’, something so nebulous (yet seemingly indispensable, such as “sustainability”) as to mean “all things to all people…subject to radically diverse interpretations and, as such, prevents anything concrete from being done” (Brown, forthcoming: 2). Resilience is neither of these extremes. Rather, it is embryonic, prefigurative, a condition but increasingly a strategy and a goal, and it can be produced and owned from below as much as it is imposed from above. In these ways, “resilience can sustain alternative practices that contradict neoliberalism; resilience can be active and dynamic, not passive; and resilience can act as a precursor to transformative action such as resistance” (DeVerteuil and Golubchikov, forthcoming). While I admit that the radical promise of resilience remains modest – a politics of survival is not sufficient for a politics of change – its very obdurateness and capaciousness gives resilience the ability to hold out for positive transformation while holding on to previous gains. One allied concept that captures this middle ground is Rajan and Duncan’s (2013, 70) “intervenient middle”:

“adopting what might seem to be an overly crass and pragmatic perspective, it appears indeed that for millions of people and hundreds of ecosystems, discrete initiatives to ensure their survival are the only ‘revolutions’ that will ever happen – at least in their lifetimes. Such initiatives, and the motivations that underlie them, cannot therefore be understood only with recourse to an analytical framework about resistance to big power, technology, state or capital…but can equally [be] about relatively localized everyday attempts to marginally improve the day-to-day drudgery of life”.

This intervenient middle is effectively resilience put in different terms – the ability to survive rather than radically overturn and overthrow. For the purposes of this critical review, I am especially interested in the resilience of previous built environments and resources – be they social housing, non-gentrified neighborhoods, community centres and co-operatives - as barriers to rapid and unwanted change throught the enforced displacements of post-2008 cities. Resilience can defend gains from previous eras under severe stress of displacement and dismantlement from the torrid pace of change, in which “th[e] enforced temporariness and flux…must bump up against the more rigid and resilient components of previous and current renderings of the city, and in this way resilience can prove positive against trends that only exacerbate the precarious nature of disposable urbanity, providing a much-needed slowing down of the frenetic and the disruptive” (DeVerteuil and Golubchikov, forthcoming). In the next section, I examine the increased pace of churn – and the resilient forces arrayed against it – in post-2008 London.

저자: Geoff DeVerteuil

서지: Geoforum 68

발간일: 2016

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