Disurbanism

Disurbanism (Coscivian: Akasarisēn, from aka- "away from" + sar "city, town") is an ideology and a design movement in Kiravia with relevance to urban and civil planning, politics, and culture. Disurbanism posits that the city (and in many formulations, the town) is a harmful and unnecessary formation and a poor way to organise human life, and that cities and towns as currently understood should be abandoned in favour of more geographically distributed patterns of settlement. Most disurbanists believe that while cities once served legitimate purposes, they have since been rendered obsolete by modern advances in communications and transportation technology, and that the utilitarian benefits of cities no longer justify the social, economic, and political costs of urbanocentrism.

Disurbanism can be distinguished from traditionalist-agrarian anti-urbanism in that disurbanists embrace technological modernity as enabling a mass escape from cities and support the diffusion of traditionally urban activities such as industry, commerce, and human services into the countryside, with the ultimate goal of erasing any clear distinction between agricultural rural areas and industrial/commercial urban ones. However, in practice there is significant overlap and coöperation between disurbanist and rural anti-urbanist currents.

Disurbanism has a long history in Coscivian thought, dating back to the orator and philosopher Linux Isō, who argued that the growing lowland and coastal cities of Ancient Coscivia were instruments of oppression that were usually ruled by tyrants and threatened the customary freedoms enjoyed by villagers, crofters, and the peoples of hill and forest lands. Shafto, the seminal philosopher of Coscivian civilisation, disfavourably compared the values, political system, and lifestyle of Era, the imperial capital, to that of smaller towns and villages. The Toatrists, an Xth century Coscivian religious movement, advocated withdrawal from cities and towns as obedience to God and recommunion with Creation.

However, urbanism...

Disurbanism under Kirosocialism

Modern disurbanism proper, as distinguished from premodern anti-urbanism, first emerged from the intellectual milieu of the Kirosocialist movement and the development agenda of the Kiravian Union. The application of Cosco-Marxist critical theory to human geography and spatial science yielded two opposing interpretations of the city. The crux of the debate was whether cities exploit the working class by design or by nature. Kirosocialist urbanists situated cities as essential vehicles driving historical progression: Urbanisation liberates the masses from the stifling tradition of the countryside and is requisite for the emergence of class consciousness, and urban centres catalyse the productive synthesis of labour, technology, and managerial science fundamental to a socialist society. Thus, the goal of socialist spatial planning should be to enhance the progressive utility of cities by eliminating anti-proletarian design elements.

Kirosocialist disurbanists dissented from this view, arguing that the town/city (sar) is a product of and inseparable from market economics. A core contention of the disurbanists was that the divide between town and country, both materially and ideologically, inherently reproduces class distinction, and that cities create the bourgeoisie as much as the bourgeoisie create them. From this perspective, abolition of this distinction is imperative for the survival of the socialist project by preventing the consolidation of a new class.

Urbanist centralisation of production versus disurbanist centering of production.

-Ribbon settlements -Linear cities -Endless Communes Vision and New Communal Living.

Contemporary Disurbanism

Disurbanists can be found among all the major political camps of modern Kiravia. Kirosocialist Disurbanists carrying on their legacy from the Kiravian Union remain active in Kirosocialist academic circles. Disurbanism is also very popular among distributist and Christian-democratic Caritists. There is a long and documented antipathy towards cities among Kiravian libertarians, who view them as overregulated, bureaucratic environments that constrain economic growth and individual freedom.