Space/Time

Merriam-Webster definition of space is “a boundless three-dimension extent in which objects and events occur and have relative positions and direction”. Webster also defines the word “time” in many different ways (nouns, verbs, adverbs….). The best definition of time is “the measured or measurable period during which an action process or condition exists or continue.” I believe David Harvey’s exploration of the “thing-like” (city) structure resemble every form of human gathering in the world. His article Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form has the title that briefly explains the rest of this article. There are two parts to this title, Social Process and the other part is Spatial Form.

The Social Process is what I believe gives the “thing-like” structure character. The Social Process is what gives the thing Harvey is talking about the city characteristic trait. The Space/Time element is a measurement that contains the Social Process. In the article David Harvey says, “ The urban and the city are not simply constituted by social process they constitutive of them. Urbanization produces all the “thing-like” configurations which we call cities.” In this quote he finally gives into calling the “thing-like “ a city. 

The example that we are all familiar that reminds us of Harvey’s article is New York City. New York isn’t famous because of where the city decided to be placed, but its famous because of what happens in New York. This city as a whole is the urbanization process that continues everyday. Harvey also says, “ Our cities are constituted not by the one but multiple spatio-temporalities, producing multiple frameworks with conflicted social process are worked out.”  NYC has about 46 districts that exist inside New York. All of them had a course of social processes that happened to form these districts. NYC is also an example of Kittos’s article “The Polis”. In his article Kitto dictates, “Attica is the territory occupied by the Athenian people, it comprised Athens-the “polis” in the narrower sense- the Piraeus, and many villages; but the people collectively were Athenians, and a citizen was an Athenian in whatever part of Attica he might live.” This is true for New York because wherever a person lives in NYC due to the “social process” he/she can be labeled a New Yorker. Now while we sit in the subway when we stereotype the way a person dress or the way the person speaks we sometimes can tell where the live in the city. Wrong or right we can accurately do this because of our knowledge of the social process that happens in this city.

The Space/Time is a container that let us know where these social processes happens or happened. In Contested Cities Harvey quotes “space and time are mere containers of social action. They are passive, neutral containers. The passive, neutral containers simply allow us to locate the action which is occurring”. I believe this quote is great explanation of what a city is. Harlem is a district that exist in NYC, and it was form because of the Social process of the city and it is what is today because of the social processes that happened America. Harlem is what it is today because of race, and human’s character to place people and location so they can keep them away from other locations and human’s character to want to be around other that are similar.  Kitto says “ the city happens to be the mere site of a process of contestation (over gender, race, class, or whatever).”

            Without Space/Time I believe these occurrences of the social processes would not exist or wouldn’t be as significant. The Space/Time is the physical form that contains the urbanization process or contains the true element of city, the people. I believe without Space/Time issues such as race, gender, class, religion, and other social issues wouldn’t be a concern, and social processes or urbanization would not exist or it will happen but be unimportant.

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