Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
including suburbanization. Politically, the integration of U.S. national eco-
nomic space helped to shift political power from the individual states to the
federal government (Moon 1994).
Late modern time-space compression in perspective
The changes in world space and time unleashed since the Industrial Revolu-
tion, the widespread use of cheap inanimate energy, the factory system, and
its accompanying e
ects on productivity are so large and numerous as to defy
the imagination. The nineteenth century saw a second wave of colonialism—
predominantly British and French—extend to every corner of the globe, so
that by the turn of the century absolute space gave way to relative space, a
notion well understood by geopolitical theorists at the time. North America
succumbed to the onslaught of Enlightenment rationality, and in turn fueled
this expansion through its own incorporation into the world economy. Rail-
roads, the decisive technology of late modernity, linked cities together in
intricate webs of interconnectivity, extended urban rent gradients into the
countryside, forged national markets that gave birth to oligopolies, and forced
into being new ways of thinking about space and time. Steamships similarly
turned oceans into lakes. Simultaneously, the telegraph uncoupled trans-
portation from communications, allowing information to circulate rapidly and
e
ff
ortlessly, reducing uncertainty and generating round upon round of self-
sustaining growth. Cities, as dense nodes of urbanity caught within this wave
of intense time-space compression, were transformed physically and socially
into machines for the production of modern goods and modern subjects.
These ontological changes were accompanied by equally dramatic shifts in
ideologies and ways of thinking. Modern science stretched geological, bio-
logical, and historical time to great lengths, while the theory of relativity
shook the doctrine of objectivism at its roots, substituting multiple times for
the singular view of time. In the arts, photography, cinema, and new ways of
painting challenged the ocularcentrism dominant since the Renaissance, sub-
stituting new representations of diverse, fragmented realities and reordering
the meanings of time and space. The telephone extended the long-distance
transmission of information from text to voice, facilitating a gradual substi-
tution for face-to-face communication and personal co-presence that extended
personal and business ties over ever-wider distances. Aviation opened up the
skies to human occupation, accelerating the tempos and rhythms of social
and economic change and producing new experiences of speed. Likewise, the
automobile reworked time and space, both through its production and con-
sumption, giving rise to highly
ff
flexible rounds of low-density suburban
expansion and accompanying cultures of individualism.
Following the horrors of German expansionism during WWII—the last
gasp of world empire in the face of an omniscient world system—the post-war
boom produced both the apex of industrial production and an unprecedented
degree of global economic and political integration. Economically, Fordism
fl
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