The biopolitical commons: A revised theory of urban land in the age of biopolitical production

Abstract

The literature on biopolitical production largely presumes that contemporary capital is parasitic, enclosing and capturing value that is autonomously and collectively produced across the urban landscape. In contrast, this article suggests that in particular contexts, planners—acting largely as surrogates for urban real estate capital—play an active role in the production of the urban commons for the sake of future enclosure. Using contemporary Chicago as a point of reference, it argues that such commons are (generally) produced in locales of racialized “ontological devaluation”—in spaces that have been historically marginalized under racial capitalism. Further still, this article develops a theoretical concept, the “biopolitical commons,” to name those spaces and practices that are produced for the sake of future racialized biopolitical accumulation—pulling together, in the process, research on biopolitical production and “abolition ecology.” Finally, this article concludes by posing a series of questions for future research on the biopolitical commons.

Fanon's Mobilities: Race, Space, Recognition

“…On the other hand, it is romantic: it suggests the possibility of an "uncontaminated" decolonial epistemology and politics, one that exists in "the South" and/or is putatively outside of the hegemony of global racialised capitalism (see, for context, de Sousa Santos 2016a, 2016b). These scholars thus imagine an approach to decolonisation that focuses rather exclusively on the celebration of epistemic diversity and on the "constitutive outside" of the capitalist socio-spatial totality (see also Conroy 2022d;Grosfoguel 2011). Against both of these imaginaries, the perspective outlined above suggests that emancipatory political action is a possibility, and that in certain conjunctures it must proceed through a break with-a negation of-the spatial relations constitutive of racialised capitalism.…”

Hardin’s legacy as a need for a ‘commoning turn’ in planning

“…12–13). Conroy (2019) also investigates cases of commons' enclosure using a case study in Chicago, and shows that planners might play a role against the commons, as ‘under the strictures of the real estate state, producing space for purposes other than profit is an enormous challenge’ (p. 474). This role of official planning is more thoroughly explored by Brinkley and Vitiello (2014) and Brinkley (2019) in the case of the historic American commons.…”

Speculative urbanism and the urban-financial conjuncture: Interrogating the afterlives of the financial crisis

“…But of course, to succeed, they must self-organize, self-insure, self-care, and be responsible and liable for the wear and tear on their cars, rooms, and bodies (Dowsett, 2014). Within this financialized speculative economy, the gig economy can actualize the biopolitical management of urban life under debt (Conroy, 2019). One can see how easily the gig economy can thrive off the vulnerabilities of this speculative urban moment, as Nowak (2021) demonstrates in this Special Issue, and generate forms of disciplinary governmentality.…”