y moving the concept of fallow b eyond agriculture to acquire
meanings that entangle it in the realm of political economy,
we can begin to speculate on the relationship between capital
accumulation and the production of t he urban fabric. A key
change that occurred over time in this regard was a shift in the
imaginary when idleness went from being understood as a valuable
regenerative activity to viewing 'inactivity' as waste. In this sense, the
machinations that the forces of capitalism unleashed on society also
worked to displace the centrality of fall owing in social and ecological
processes. Rising to replace the process of fall owing was an ideology
of progress that disparaged idleness and inactivity.
The rationalisation of space under capitalism is one facet of the
ideology of progress which has had a profound impact on the spatial
organisation of society in nature. l\1:arxist geographer David Harvey
wTites that 'capital accumulation and t h e production of urbanisation
go hand in hand'. For Harvey, urbanisation is a physical manifestation
of the drive to produce a 'rational landscape' in which barriers to the
turnover time of capital accumulation are removed. In this sense then,
letting space lie fallow introduced unacceptable friction into t he
capitalist system. Highlighting this shift, urban and environmental
geographer Matthevv Gandy notes that 'the very idea of r est, and
of resting space in particular - letting t he earth sleep - counter s the
accelerative and all-encompassing momentum of late modernity'.
The incongruity, however, isn't just a question of an anxious sp ace of
late modernity. The instrumentalisation of space is already appar ent
in the mid-19th century, when Ildefon s Cerda's opening statement for
urbanisation sought to 'fill the earth'. And by the early 20th century,
this program1natic vision for design was fully institutionalised when
Ebenezer Howard's seminal Garden Cities project 'sought to maximise
functionality through territory saturated with activity'.
Time is also rationalised and subsumed under t he growth imperative,
which legitimates practices used to force p eople into r econfigured
social r elations. As critical urban theorist Alvaro Se villa-Buitrago
r em arks, for example, '[i]improver s couldn't stand idleness, regardless
of whether it referred to a quality of land or to poor common ers
"wasting" productive time by contemplating their grazing livestock
instead of embracing wage discipline as day labourer s'. It was the
capitalist project to proletarianise t he population that transformed
social relations connected more wit h ecological rhythms into t he realm
of the abstract rhythms of capitalism. Put another way, wresting
productivity from humans - and non-humans - through labour
discipline has always b een a central feature of the project of capitalism,
from the Enclosure Acts in England until today. Capturing 'wasted
time' also had another social dimension: the production of new forms
of citizenship meant to underpin the bourgeois vision of t he modern
metropolis. In New York City, for example, Sevilla-Buitrago interprets
the construction of Central Park as a 'special kind of enclosure ... [that
was meant to] shift behaviors from one regime of publicity to another '
in a battle that pitted the elite against the commoning practices
of the New York City streetscape by recently arrived immigrants.
\Vhile geographer Tony ~Teis has shown that t he slow rhythms and
periodic pauses of fall owing can influen ce social organisation in
potentially progressive ways, we see above t hat the devaluation
of idleness has instead promoted a capitalist subject synchronised
to the rhythms of capitalist time.
Taken as a whole, t he move to valuing progress over fallowing
signalled a regime change that rationalised space and time, which,
in turn, produced radical social, ecological and continuous urban
transformations that, today, are felt on a planetary scale. Vie\ving
the planet as a kind of perpetual growth machine vvith a core purpose
of chasing profits, an ever-growing metabolism, is churning t he earth
in successive waves of creative destruction. This results in both acute
and chronic pathologies of devalued human social relations, dimjnished
diversity of the biosphere and a continually transformed urban fabric
at ever larger scales.
\iVhat impact has the growth imperative had on the design
professions~ Embedded in, and arguably a tool of, capital, the design
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