ABSTRACT
The multifaceted sociospatial transformations Henri Lefebvre described as the “urban revolution” must be viewed as an essential precondition for the emergence of a specialized world city network. Urban society is gestating in and through the “bureaucratic society of controlled consumption.” The expression “urban society” meets a theoretical need. It is more than simply a literary or pedagogical device, or even the expression of some form of acquired knowledge; it is an elaboration, a search, a conceptual formulation. The urban phenomenon has had a profound effect on the methods of production: productive forces, relationships of production, and the contradictions between them. The theory of complexification anticipates the revenge of development over growth. The same is true for the theory of urban society. The basic proposition, that growth cannot continue indefinitely and that the means can remain an end without a catastrophe occurring, seems paradoxical.
