The escalating privatization of urban space meets John Friedmann’s post-urban landscape

In his recent work on China, John Friedmann (see especially 2013; also 2005, 2006) gives us a brilliant and visionary interpretation of a condition he names the post-urban. He uses the term “post-urban era” to capture

a period of transition during which many single-centered urban regions are gradually absorbed by and incorporated into a polycentric urban system that extends over a relatively compact, densely populated area and is home to multiple millions, as many as upwards of 50 million or more. Such a region can no longer be called a city in any conventional sense; it is an unprecedented form of the human habitat.