The Logics and Logistics of Urban Progress: Contradictions and Conceptual Challenges of the Global North-South Divide

This article explores contradictions and pitfalls inherent to the binary concept of the North-South divide. Using Savannah, Georgia and Montreal, Quebec as illustrations, we argue that characteristics of what is commonly defined as typically “Global South” can equally be observed in cities that would generally be referred to as “Global North.” The clear-cut distinctions between global cities of the North and megacities of the South are dissipating as cities use strategies of scalar identification to retell their own pasts. However, simply to point to emerging similarities between global cities and megacities is to ignore the underlying material logics of urban development. Rather than completely doing away with socially constructed North-South dichotomies, then, we argue that they serve historically and geographically specific social functions. We contend that narratives of progress and lagged development play an important role in processes of neoliberal state restructuring in that they help to maintain social cohesion and legitimacy for political action despite the material unevenness and crisis tendencies of neoliberalization processes. The logistic infrastructures that support post-industrial urban development patterns serve as a case in point for these irreducible material logics that underpin the hopes for a better urban future.