• Journal of East-Asian Urban History
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.163-190
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• 2020

This paper aims to introduce and understand critically the work of Edward Soja, mainly the First part of the which develops his own concepts, such as 'synekism', 'trialectics of space', 'regionality' and 'geohistory'. Most of all, in explaining Geohistory, he emphasizes three 'Urban revolutions': First Urban revolutions in Jericho and ÇatalHüyük, which shows first synekism as proto urban society, Second in Ur and other Sumerian cities where appeared a concentrated power of central government and its transcendental ideologies, and Third in Manchester and in Chicago, typical capitalist cities. These three urban revolutions don't correspond to the established historical periodization. In order to understand these revolutions, it is necessary to comprehend the concept of 'machine' of G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, inspired, in fact, by Lewis Mumford - Primitive Territorial machine, Barbaric Despotic machine, and Civilized Capitalist machine. However, these periodization and concepts of E. Soja have to be applied very cautiously in accordance with concrete historical sources, avoiding theoretical distortion on positivity of historical facts.