Review: Suburban Planet or Planetary Suburbanization? Urban or Suburban in the Core?

Abstract

This essay by Rafael Danialy aims to summarize some of the main discourses debated in the book by Keil, offering a descriptive overview while outlining a critical perspective on some of the topics discussed. The author seeks to reintroduce the suburban as an urban phenomenon with an anomalous particularity, rather than the earlier outline of it as an extensive fraction of the urban core. Keil tries to place the suburban at the center of discussion, reassessing some of the existing debates such as “Planetary Urbanization” (Brenner 2014; Brenner and Schmid 2015), or using concepts such as Lefebvre’s (2003) ‘explosion’ metaphor (from the implosion–explosion analogy). He also endeavors to shift the perspective on suburbanization from the centralized Global North view to a postcolonial Global South one, drawing on concepts such as “worlding” (Roy 2011). In this respect, his approach and the cases he brings up can be considered somewhat controversial.