1 Social complexity and space Vinicius Netto PhD Candidate, The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies University College London Abstract Social and cultural observers have recently observed a world of increasing complexity – a problem posed mainly by the growing production of possibility of information and communication, mobility and connectivity in a “world on the move”. However, questions regarding the connection between social complexity and space seem still unexplored. On the one hand, the society-space debate has not addressed the spatiality of bodily-mediated communication as a key dimension of social reproduction. On the other hand, descriptions of an increasing social complexity also seem to evade the spatiality of communication and, by extension, have ignored the role of space in the production of complexity. This article puts the work of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann under a geographical perspective in order to argue, firstly, that the problem of space in the communicative sociation of practice and the problem of increasing social complexity are in fact deeply inter-related; secondly, that this relation includes space as an active part of the way societies deal with their own complexity. The article is a speculation on the role of the urbanisation of space beyond a crucial element in the sociation of practice – as an active means to what Luhmann calls “reduction of social complexity,” a major problem faced by contemporary societies. Key words Social complexity, urban space, communication, self-referentiality. 1. Introduction Many researchers have asserted a perhaps risky idea that ‘space matters’ to society. Such assertions are part of paradigms that illuminate rather distinct aspects of socio-spatial reality – from the Marxist approaches of Harvey, Lefebvre and others to the currently fashionable actor-network theory. But how do these assertions deal with the problem of a growing social complexity, a complexity that seems to manifest itself mostly through the increasing production of information, communication, and the connectivity between agencies and between places – the constant ‘transgression’ of territorial boundaries through ‘flows’ of mobilities of people, information and objects? (see Castells, 1996; Urry, 2001) Space has indeed been included in the problematic of social reproduction. The social consequences of a production system based on the fostering of information and connectivity seem to require new theories (Law and Urry, 2002). I argue in this