The urban question as a scale question: Reflections on Henri Lefebvre, urban theory and the politics of scale

Since the classic work of Castells (1972), the 'urban question' has been a focal point for debate among critical urban researchers. Against the backgr ound of contemporary debates on globalization and urban restructuring, this article argues that the urban question is currently being redefined as a s cale question. The first part of the essay reconstructs the diverse scalar assumptions that were implicit within earlier rounds of debate on the urban question and argues that, since the early 1990s, urban researchers have co nfronted questions of scale with an unprecedented methodological self-refle xivity. Under contemporary conditions of 'glocalization', urban scholars ar e systematically rethinking the relations between urban spaces and supraurb an processes of capital accumulation, political regulation and social strug gle. The second part of the article explores the urban question as a scale question through the lens of Henri Lefebvre's writings on space, scale and state power. The author argues that three aspects of Lefebvre's work are pa rticularly relevant to the task of reconceptualizing the urban question as a scale question in the current period: (1) his notion of an 'implosion-exp losion' of urbanization; (2) his theorization of state spatiality; and (3) his analysis of the politics of scale. The urban remains a fundamental aren a of capitalist spatiality, but its social, political and economic dynamics hinge increasingly upon its relations to a wide range of supraurban geogra phical scales. Lefebvre's approach to sociospatial theory provides a partic ularly useful source of methodological insights for decoding the scalar dim ensions of the urban question in the current era of global, national and lo cal restructuring.