Critical Planning

We have entered an era that David Harvey (1989) has coined “time-space compression,” which refers to the reduced production time and spatial barriers as a result of advanced capitalism. This phenomenon inaugurates the opacity in the urban — the concealed and asymmetrical power geometry, and the homogenization of cities. Porosity brought by Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis (1925) in their writingon Naples, on the other hand, depicts urban cities with interpenetration and heterogeneity, resisting any fixedness. Starting from personal memories in Shenzhen, China, this essay proposes that the city can be seen as an urban space where opacity and porosity coexist and mingle with one another, which dissolves the dichotomous rural-urban configuration in cities. In this sense, Shenzhen is fused with tensions between two forces: capitalist modernization and standardizedlandscapes that alienate and homogenize lives andexperiences; and porous cultures and everydayness inthe urban villages that resist the former. Together withtheories of time-space compression and porosity, thepaper will then examine the urban villages in Shenzhenas porous spaces through the prisms of space, time,and body. In conclusion, I argue that porosity here,as a form of openness, relationality, and fluidity,orchestrates an alternative spatial imaginary thatmediates capitalist cities.