The City as an Assemblage: Towards a Theory of Heteropolis

Abstract

This article is devoted to a conceptualization of the city through the assemblage theory of Manuel DeLanda. We will show how his system of distinctions (built around three oppositions: "expressive/material”, “territorialization/deterritorialization”, and "encoding/decoding”) explains the nature of urban heterogeneity. The city as an assemblage is “not a single whole”, demonstrating “sovereignty without self-reference”, a paradoxical stability of relations between heterogeneous elements. Particular attention in the text is devoted to the “connectedness/segmentarity” opposition. Borrowing this conceptual pair from the works of G. Deleuze, DeLanda rearranges the focal points, as a result of which the segmentation of space - an analogue of the disentanglement phenomenon in actor-network theory - is taken out of the brackets of his analytical narrative. We will try to correct this unfortunate omission by returning the concept of segmentation to the language of assemblage urbanism. Another aim of the text is to outline possible scenarios for the transformation of urban assemblages. The empty 36 streets of “quarantine cities”, the transfer of public city events online, the development of delivery services and the gradual death of familiar social practices - all these observable phenomena can be analyzed as attributes of the processes of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” in the language of assemblage urbanism.