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Postcolonialising Geography: Tactics and Pitfalls
Abstract
The moves within postcolonial theory to "provincialise Europe" encourage an acknowledgement of the parochial nature of much of what still passes for universal theory in the western academy. Within geography, postcolonialism has generated a strong interest in colonial histories and contemporary postcolonial politics, but this has not displaced the dominant parochial forms of theorising in the discipline. The paper argues for a more cosmopolitan theoretical project within geography, one whose routes through a range of intellectual traditions and contexts might encourage a broader scope to conversations about space and nature, and produce more lively and creative insights into some of the urgent political issues facing the world today. A geography whose intellectual vision is limited to the concerns and perspectives of the richest countries in the world has little hope of effectively participating in the debates that will matter in the twenty-first century. Within the frame of this long-term intellectual project, this paper will suggest some initial practical steps which researchers, writers, teachers and students in geography might take to start to decentre the predominant Euro-Americanism of the discipline. The specific sources of inspiration for this argument are drawn from comparative urbanism and Southern African geography.
... The comparative approach Comparative studies have a long history in urban geography, with recent developments in comparative urbanism critically reflecting on these practices (cf. Robinson 2003. The main critique emphasizes the parochialism of theory generation, in which the analysis of very few -mostly Western -cities as empirical sites are taken as a legitimate point of departure for formulating universal insights. ...
... This critique has led to new approaches to comparative analysis, which challenge these epistemologically one-sided conventions in favor of a more evenhanded analysis. This debate is led in particular by Jennifer Robinson (Robinson , 2003 and Colin McFarlane (McFarlane 2010, with a focus on overcoming the parochialism of urban theory by bridging the North-South divide in theory generation and fostering "a revitalized and experimental international comparativism that will enable urban studies to stretch its resources for theory building across the world of cities" (Robinson 2011, p.19). Their suggested approach offers new, valuable means for theory generation that are both regionally embedded and sufficiently sophisticated to allow for theoretical abstraction. ...
... The dynamics within these cities might, on the surface, appear as global city and mega city tensions, but a comparative analysis of the two might show only how Northern practices and theory globalize to the South, but also how theory production in the Global South might transfer back to the Global North and explain, for example, the emerging patterns of fragmented supply that are more commonly associated with the Global South (Robinson 2003). ...
Diese Dissertation untersucht die Frage, wie sich aktuelle Finanzpraktiken auf die Versorgung mit städtischer Wasserinfrastruktur auswirken und welche Konsequenzen diese Praktiken für Städte haben. Die Arbeit umfasst drei spezifische Ziele, die jeweils in einer separaten Publikation behandelt werden: Die erste Publikation entwickelt den theoretischen Rahmen zur Erarbeitung der Forschungsfrage und prüft diesen in einer ersten empirischen Anwendung. Dabei wird argumentiert, dass durch die Betonung der Rolle von Infrastrukturen und die Entwicklung eines auf "Finanzökologien" basierenden Modells die Auswirkungen der Finanzialisierung auf Städte besser verstanden werden kann. Die empirische Anwendung im Kontext der Einführung von Kommunalanleihen in Großbritannien zeigt erste räumliche Effekte auf. In der zweiten Publikation wird die zeitliche Dimension der Finanzialisierung von städtischer Wasserinfrastruktur untersucht. Sie hebt die soziale Erfahrung von Zeit (temporalities/Zeitlichkeiten) hervor und zeigt am Beispiel des Thames Tideway Tunnels (TTT) in London, wie dessen Finanzialisierung bestimmte zeitliche Charakteristika festlegt. Diese eröffnen und verschließen Möglichkeitsräume, welche abschließend betrachtet werden. Die dritte Publikation wendet das im ersten Artikel entwickelte Modell auf eine vergleichende Analyse der Finanzökologien der städtischen Infrastruktur in London und Mumbai an. Um die sich wandelnde Dynamik der Finanzökologie besser zu verstehen, verfolgt der Artikel einen zweistufigen Ansatz: Zunächst werden Initiativen zur Einführung von Kommunalanleihen als Mittel zur Infrastrukturfinanzierung auf nationaler Ebene untersucht. Sodann wird beispielhaft ein Fall der Projektfinanzierung auf lokaler Ebene herangezogen. Die empirische Analyse dieser Fälle fungiert anschließend als Grundlage für eine vergleichende Untersuchung, welche unterschiedliche Muster der Finanzialisierung identifiziert. Im weiteren Verlauf setzt sich der vorliegende Text kritisch mit den ursprünglichen Zielen und der Methode der Dissertation auseinander und gibt einen Überblick über die geleisteten Beiträge zur einschlägigen Literatur. Der Schlussabschnitt fasst die drei Veröffentlichungen zusammen und bezieht diese auf aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse zur Finanzialisierung der städtischen Infrastruktur. Abschließend wird ein Ausblick auf die Bedeutung des behandelten Feldes für die Herausforderungen des Klimawandels und das Aufkommen von „Smart City“-Konzepten gegeben.
... A second big challenge for planning historiography relates to the many critiques of the Euro-American bias of various historiographies of urban planning. Jennifer Robinson (2003), for example, has launched an unrelenting critique of the geographies of urban planning history, sharply noting the enduring divide between "First World" cities that are seen as models, generating theory and policy, and "Third World" cities that are seen as problems, requiring diagnosis and reform. Against the "regulating fiction" of the First World global city and this "asymmetrical ignorance," Robinson (2003: 275) calls for a more geographically balanced history of urban planning. ...
... He described the political ideas and professional networks-the "circuits of knowledge" (Featherstone and Venn 2006;McCann 2008)-through which the concept was transferred from one place to the other, and the local contingencies that encouraged its enthusiastic adoption. Similarly, urban scholars employing postcolonial perspectives (for example, Robinson 2003Robinson , 2006Robinson , 2011McFarlane 2010) challenge notions of singular origins and influential individuals. In addition, historical and comparative work on global cities has critically investigated planning and policy circulation, and the translation of planning policies and practices in different contexts (Sanyal 2005;Friedmann 2005 ...
... In doing so, this paper advances the political project of 'provincialising' (Chakrabarty, 2000) the geography of geography (Robinson, 2003). Such a project acknowledges the embeddedness of academic scholarship in a postcolonial moment, and challenges the parochialism and Euro-Americanism in 'the geographical tradition' (Craggs, 2019;McEwan, 1998). ...
... In a similar vein, Carroza and Benabdallah (2022: 3) in examining the practices of silencing and representing 'Africa' in Chinese IR scholarship, suggest to 'orient the investigative gaze toward the potential layers of asymmetrical representations and hierarchies of IR theory from within the Global South itself'. This echoes Robinson's (2003) call to provincialise universalising knowledge, whether it is Euro-American, or in this case, Chinese. Central to concerns with the recovery and autonomy of Chinese WRG and FAS is postcolonial critiques' particular attention to questions of agency and authority, especially with regard to who can write and speak on behalf of 'the Rest' and on what grounds. ...
This paper argues for a ‘provincialised’ critical geography of area studies by tracing the spatial genealogy of three waves of Chinese world regional geography and foreign area studies. The shifting terrains have been shaped strongly by the continually reconfigured power-geometries and Chinese thinking of ‘the international’. The two coeval fields and knowledge production therein are situated in place-specific institutional contexts, which engender contingent disciplinary geographies and their enduring lack of dialogue. The contemporary regeneration of Chinese ‘world-writing’ brings its own identities and discourses, power relations and complex impacts to local-global epistemic (in)equality, which requires and rewards further critical mapping.
... To address the deficiency of empirical studies on the implications of the reliance of local governments on private capital for urban planning objectives (Tasan-Kok and Baeten, 2012) and also to follow the post-colonial approach of urban study (Robinson, 2002(Robinson, , 2003(Robinson, , 2006Roy, 2009;Goodfellow, 2018) this paper uses empirical evidence from Tehran to explore this situation. It has been more than three decades since the Tehran Municipality received any money from central government and it is financially independent. ...
... In response to the critique of Robinson (2006Robinson ( , 2003Robinson ( , 2002 and Roy (2009) and their focus on the limitation of the scope of urban theory which is mostly based on US and European cities, this research has chosen Tehran as its focus. To address the dichotomy between Global North cities which are seen as models to generate theory and policy and Global South cities which are perceived as followers and imitators of those Global North cities, Robinson (2006) proposes the concept of 'ordinary cities'. ...
This article, by using empirical evidence from Tehran, looks beyond the West to explore the implications of the reliance of the entrepreneurial local government on private capital for the urban planning system. The main premise of this paper is that the financial dependence of Tehran Municipality on income generated from increasing construction density (density bonus tool) paid by developers has led to planning that is responsive to property market interests rather than the city’s strategic needs or the public interest. This paper makes a contribution to the literature of urban planning by providing a new case study of density bonus tool focused in Tehran; that allows a better understanding of the issue of how municipal financial tools (such as density bonus) could affect planning decisions.
... The paper builds on the growing line of urban research, reinforcing the need for contextually informed definitions of smart cities. In this line of research, there is a critical emphasis on North-centrism (Robinson, 2003) of current smart city research underestimating 'geographies of theory' (Roy, 2013). It is argued that the majority of critical smart city studies focus solely on the parameters, processes, and practices in the global North (Martin et al., 2018). ...
... Such detailed policy analysis is unprecedented; as the variety of smart city policies recently produced in India have been, so far, mostly unscrutinised. Second, by focusing on India, the paper builds on a line of research that calls out the Euro-American centric notion of urban studies (Robinson, 2003;Roy, 2011;Scott and Storper, 2015); and goes beyond the limited geographies of the mostly Northcentric existing smart city discourse (Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015). We look towards the unique experiences of the South (in this case, India) to learn how smart cities have been articulated in relevant policymaking processes. ...
Despite widespread practices worldwide and increasing research centred on smart urbanism, there is no universal definition for ‘smart cities’. More importantly, a growing line of research warns about the north-centric notion of smart city research which underestimates the fast rate of uptake in the global South. In a search for a contextually informed definition of smart cities, the paper focuses on India: Home to one-third of the global South population, and the cradle of the ambitious Smart City Mission to develop 100 smart cities nationwide. It investigates the Smart City Proposals (SCPs) prepared for the first 20 smart cities prioritised, as part of the Mission. Findings offer a typology of smart city approaches; and shed light on the smart dimensions prioritised (e.g. smart governance, and smart infrastructure) versus those overlooked (e.g. smart environment and smart economy) at the smart city policymaking level in India. The paper calls for further empirical research to investigate how the typologies pan out at the implementation of smart cities across the nation.
... The way we deal with our provincialism and how we actively embrace provincialization should not happen in isolation from the international discussion on building a more cosmopolitan geography and efforts to do so (Robinson, 2003). Southern Theory (Connell, 2007;Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011) has shown us how to work from a different perspective, using other theorists and fashioning new concepts. ...
... Such grand calls for more cosmopolitan and decolonized geographies need to include immediate practical steps for action (Robinson, 2003). In this regard, I identify multilingualism, citation politics and publication ethics as immediate avenues for action. ...
English-speaking hegemony shapes the geography of legitimate knowledge production in our discipline, pushing geographies in other languages and traditions to the periphery. The overall phenomenon has overshadowed these peripheries' diversity and what is at stake within them. I argue that continental European geographies occupy a specific position – they have been provincialized rather than peripheralized. This provincialization should not be lamented. Given our colonial past and Northern privilege, we should instead embrace this provincialization as long overdue and a moral imperative. I subsequently explore a few provincialization-embracing postures – all with merit, none unproblematic – that we can adopt for fieldwork and writing. I then propose practical steps that continental European geographies can take toward a more ethical and cosmopolitan praxis.
... 2 A partir del caso argentino este proyecto comparativo quiere poner en cuestión los marcos teóricos de los sujetos de clase neoliberales que toman la experiencia estadounidense como la norma y que conceptualizan al sujeto de clase neoliberal como autónomo, emprendedor y amante de la libertad (Brown, 2003;Schram, 2000;Watkins, 1993). Los informes sobre sujetos de clase neoliberales y sobre pobreza en general están enfocados desde una perspectiva angloamericana y no prestan atención suficiente a cómo estas formas "devienen nativas" en lugares específicos (Roy, 2003;Robinson, 2003). ...
En el presente artículo analizamos la construcción relacional de la clase media en relación con la pobreza a partir de un trabajo comparativo entre Seattle y Buenos Aires durante el período de recuperación relativa de la crisis socioeconómica de la primera década del milenio. Con la teoría de la pobreza relacional como eje conceptual, entendemos que se reproducen o se desafían subjetividades de clase mediante interacciones que atraviesan o confrontan los límites entre grupos sociales. Y, también, que las relaciones con la pobreza pueden producir lecturas alternativas de la formación de la clase media en Estados Unidos y Argentina.
... political geography follows a limited and impoverished version of the discipline that largely ignores the political concerns of four-fifths of humankind. Also, O'Loughlin et al. (2008) had observed that most political geographers in the North American and European core are not very familiar with the evolution of the field in 'relative peripheries'.Robinson (2003), for her part, warned that political geography is continually subject to parochial forms of theorizing, and to this can be addedBerg's (2012) view on Anglophone geography as a predominantly masculine, white enterprise. ...
The chapter reflects the characteristics of neo-liberal of university, academic capitalism, geopolitics of knowledge and the forms of so-called Anglophone hegemony. The text focus is on the debate regarding the Anglophone hegemony in human/political geography and on the dominant role of English language.
... Even so, the baristas do not only brew coffee in a complex way, but also in a simple way for they are expected to have a wide range of skills and knowledge of brewing coffee, creating memorable coffee experiences for customers, and maintaining a clean and organized workspace (Maspul, 2023, p. 11). Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the baristas are vulnerable to pressure (Maspul, 2023, p. 12) which can be seen as one of pernicious effects of pervasive Eurocentrism hidden behind universalism which, as well as globalization, aims to homogenize (Robinson, 2003;Slater, 1992). With reference to Marx (1959, pp. ...
This research aims to analyze how and why Java coffee depicted by Kopi Tiwus in Dee’s Filosofi Kopi is commodified after Dutch colonialism which is inseparable from Eurocentrism ended in 1945 when Indonesia gained its independence. After applying qualitative research method with a post-colonial approach which involves collecting data in the form of words and analyzing the data by using Spivak’s planetarity as a post-colonial theory, it is found that the coffee is commodified through interaction between global agents depicted by Ben and Jody as owners of a coffee shop in Jakarta, namely Filosofi Kopi, and planetary subjects depicted by a middle-aged man with a strong Javanese accent who makes Ben and Jody know the coffee and by Pak Seno who sells it in a rickety hut in a rural area which is not far from Klaten, Central Java. Through the interaction, knowledge of features of Java coffee which is produced in smallholder coffee plantations on Java Island, Indonesia suggesting the country to enlarge its coffee plantations and to provide information and assistance of coffee cultivation technology to raise competitiveness of its coffee in the world market can be exchanged. The features are well-grown in a fertile land, the highest quality type of coffee, and brewed in a simple way which lead Java coffee to become a commodity to generate capital which can be globalized as well as European coffee depicted by Ben’s Perfecto as Ben’s creation together with a variety of popular espresso drinks. Made with espresso method and machine found and developed by Europeans along with other coffee brewing equipment and tools being homogenized in numerous cafes around the world, including in Indonesia, European coffee can be juxtaposed with Java coffee which does not require use of the machine and thus regarded as a different one. Novelty of the research is commodifying Java coffee without alienation of labor as Spivak states that planetarity keeps homogenization and differentiation in alterity which makes planetarity “in excess” of globalization of capital.
... For example, seeRobinson 2003;Sharp 2011;Jazeel 2011;Sidaway 2000.Isabella D'AngeloDecolonising Space and the Self Annali di Ca' Foscari. Serie orientale ...
Understanding capitalism as a system that inherently triggers extinction, this article portrays how the self and its character have been modified within neoliberalism to a point in which it has lost its subjectivity and it is bound to the laws and logic of capitalism. By looking at necropolitics and psychopolitics from a critical neo-Marxist lens, this article puts external biopolitics at stake while connecting them with different ways capitalism has to alienate subjects that are victims and, at the same time, vassals of this extinctive ideology. In addition, this theoretical framework will be analysed in a more tangible way by close-reading some sections of Black Mirror ’s episode “Nosedive” as an example of a dystopia that is not that far away from our reality, where value and morality depend on the superficial image and extreme individuality of the subjects that belong to and perpetuate the ideology and dynamics of internal control, extinguishing their own existence as subjects. Finally, this article interrogates present times attempting to understand whether we are living in the Necrocene, the age of extinction due to capitalist logic, and whether this extinction of the self and its subjectivity might be symptoms of it.
... It then reflects upon how the GD experience intertwined with other critical turns occurring elsewhere, and allowed a (mostly implicit and latent) dialogue between Italian and Anglo-American radical/critical geographies of the time. In the final section, we highlight what has remained of the GD ethos in the current practices of Italian geographers in light of recent attempts to transcend contemporary geographies of knowledge and theory production (Sheppard et al., 2013), overcome the 'asymmetric ignorance' outlined by Robinson (2003) between global North and global South scholars-extending it to a 'differently central' or 'differently marginal' position as ours is-and produce a truly 'global' geographical scholarship (Lancione & McFarlane, 2021). We finally suggest that recalling the hidden roots of other radical and critical geographical traditions can contribute to challenging the 'skewed transnationalism' of today's international geography (Van Meeteren, 2019), as well as nurture and reposition the present 'worlding' practices (Müller, 2021) of non-Anglophone critical geographers. ...
The article recalls the history of Geografia Democratica, a collective of scholars that during the second half of the 1970s sought to dismantle the old deterministic approach and promote a critical and radical turn in Italian academic geography. The aim is to contribute to the ongoing debate upon ‘other geographical traditions’ beyond the Anglo-American hegemony, to highlight the pluriversal roots of contemporary critical geographies and the influence that the transnational circulation of knowledge had in their unfolding, in light of recent quests for a more global geographical imagination. To do so, the article first engages with Geografia Democratica as a ‘rupture experience’ in the mainstream of Italian geography, and then discusses how it intersected or not similar turns occurred elsewhere, focusing on the mostly implicit dialogue between Italian and Anglo-American critical/radical geographies of the time. By following the controversial story of the collective during and after its short existence, we question its legacy for today’s geographical scholarship, and reflect more generally upon the significance of reviving other critical and radical traditions. To highlight the plurality of our disciplinary past, we suggest, is crucial not only to fill the ‘asymmetric ignorance’ between various traditions, but also to nurture and reposition the present ‘worlding’ practices of non-Anglophone critical geographers.
... Thus, when Scott and Storper (2016) talk of Dickens's London, or Zola's Paris or Lewis's Chicago all suffering similar poverty levels in their day as postcolonial cities do now, they simply ignore the combined power of racism and violence that mark postcolonial cities and Southern urbanism as different from precisely those Northern cities which shared levels of poverty and little else. Watson (2021), Robinson (2003) and others more sympathetic to postcolonial urbanism also rarely dwell on the racist violence that created the foundations on which the postcolonial city is built. ...
The Gauteng City-Region (GCR) incorporates the three major metropolitan municipalities of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni and is the most important polycentric urban area in southern and South Africa. This article explores the interplay between the politics and planning of urban space in the post-apartheid context in which the GCR is located. This article applies theories of postcolonial and post-apartheid urbanism to analyse the dialectics of politics and planning in city-regions and in relation to their component cities, to help answer the key question: How is politics shaping planning in the GCR in the democratic period, and with what future impact?
... A partir de la siguiente década, la influencia en la región, de la crítica poscolonial a los estudios urbanos (Jazeel, 2012;Robinson, 2003;Roy, 2005) permitió extender y continuar con estos debates. Esta sintetiza el trabajo de diversas autoras que han desarrollado críticas epistemológicas a los estudios urbanos dominantes tomando los aportes de los estudios poscoloniales y subalternos anglosajones. ...
... 9 Il carattere necessariamente situato della conoscenza è al centro delle riflessioni della geografia femminista e postcoloniale (cfr. almeno Rose, 1993Rose, e 1997McKittrick, 2006;Robinson, 2003e Roy, 2016, ma si pone nel campo delle visual methodologies con particolare evidenza. La posizionalità della fotografia (e dei video) è infatti molto corporea: una foto o una ripresa è fatta da uno specifico punto di vista, da una specifica persona, con uno specifico stato d'animo ecc. ...
Come fare ricerca, e pensare, con le immagini? Come usare le immagini per trasformare la comprensione della città e qual è il contributo che il linguaggio visivo può fornire per incrinare il modo di guardare la realtà (urbana), aprire nuove interpretazioni, cambiare il nostro sguardo e la nostra visione delle cose? L'articolo riflette su queste domande ricostruendo criticamente la stretta relazione fra immagini e città e il modo in cui la rappresentazione videofotografica della città dialoga con il cambiamento del modo di pensare, concettualizzare e conoscere l'urbano, per poi discutere se e come produrre fotografie e video nel percorso di ricerca, e quindi studiare lo spazio urbano attraverso la camera e ri-guardare lo spazio urbano fotografato e filmato, sia un modo per affermare e praticare un approccio critico allo studio della città. Presentando alcuni esempi di ricerca in campo urbano che hanno prodotto immagini (fotografie e video), l'articolo si concentra quindi sulle potenzialità del linguaggio visivo nella ricerca urbana con l'obiettivo di esplorare le possibilità di una more-than textual research che, riconoscendo il portato teorico e interpretativo delle immagini, usi le fotografie e i video come dispositivi critici per superare le chiusure, i limiti e le aporie delle visioni mainstream dell'urbano e costruire un dialogo, per tanti versi tutto da immaginare, fra critical visual methodologies e critical urban theory.
... The encompassing comparative approach is therefore often conflated with a universal approach, and thus provokes criticism that it is an approach that produces an 'all-encompassing, transcontextual, and neocolonial metanarrative that, it is claimed, ignores the power-laden realities of difference, place-specificity, everyday life, struggle, and experience' (Brenner, 2018, p. 570). Indeed, the encompassing approach to comparative work seemingly comes into conflict with comparison as a means to redress the parochial origins of theory (Robinson, 2003) given its totalizing tendencies (Goonewardena, 2018;Oswin, 2020). To better parse out the implications, it helps to distinguish between the comparative methodological approach that relies on an encompassing logic and the encompassing logics that reinscribe epistemological universalisms. ...
... The ways in which the mechanisms of GCF reports and the inherent temporal functioning of finance reinforce each other in their multifaceted logics of dispossession call for a postcolonial critique of Groy. Such a critique implies understanding the fallacy of current GCF practices from a point of view that acknowledges the historical trajectories of previous colonial and development practices as well as the knowledge projects that shape a diversity of cities today (Robinson, 2003). Thus, if we have so far argued that Groy is necessary for finance to function, a postcolonial lens allows us to expand this argument by flagging how the outlined futuring mechanisms are entangled in and are reinforcing a dispossessive logic of space (Chakkalakal and Ren, 2022, this issue) through three overlapping characteristics: Groy's generic character, its ahistoricity and its affective politics of fear. ...
Of late, the trope of the green, smart and climate‐resilient city has dominated imaginations of urban futures across the globe. Less visible perhaps, but arguably of equal social impact, global climate finance (GCF) agendas have asserted themselves as the only imaginable pathway to do and undo such futures in effective ways. Based on a document analysis of recent GCF reports, this contribution unpicks the mechanisms of ‘futuring’ advanced in this process of agenda setting, and sketches its inherent imaginaries of a model future city. We borrow from John Berger's city of Troy and call this city Groy. Groy is a metaphor for green growth; it is the World Bank's fantasy project: a techno‐capitalist vision of prosperity, the bank's donor darling and its best practice case. In rendering this fantasy into a fictional city, we explore how future visions of urban GCF initiatives shape cities today to allow for a sustained critique of that future and, in consequence, a rethinking of present times. Our analysis builds on the work of futurists Ben Anderson and John Urry, and an emerging debate that seeks to postcolonialize climate finance, to demand thinking about definancialization beyond regulation as a sociopolitical process of opening up the future for other imaginations.
... Urban theorists have been re-evaluating the concept of the city since investigations have generally studied the spatial arrangements and social patterns of particular urban places, too often nations of the Northern globe. Scholars have increasingly questioned and challenged the sites and biases upon which urban theory has been based (Davis, 2004;Robinson, 2002Robinson, , 2003Roy, 2009;Stren, 2001;Wachsmuth, 2014). ...
En la primera sección se expone una visión sistémica de la complejidad social y las agencias de lo objetual, la percepción, los imaginarios y la mente; en la segunda sección se da énfasis a las memorias y saberes que ayuda a construir y estructurar el diseño desde su quehacer y práctica en los contextos sociales; posteriormente en la tercera sección de este libro, se plantea la estrecha relación de las personas con su entorno construido y cómo desde el diseño emergen identidades y procesos que consolidan sociedades; finamente en la cuarta sección se establece al tiempo presente y los contextos sociales actuales como punto de partida para la descripción de la incidencia que puede tener el diseño y la percepción, en los fenómenos que ocurren dichos contextos.
La colaboración de investigadores de diferentes especialidades y de distintas universidades aportó al libro una panorámica amplia del entendimiento de la actividad del diseño que deja de manifiesto la relevancia de éste al observar de manera holista nuestra realidad. Asimismo, los textos develan las implicaciones de lo que creamos en la construcción de lo que fuimos, somos y seremos, y nos invitan a pensar al diseño en diferentes escalas, considerar al tiempo como variable inherente de la proyección y tener presente la complejidad de los contextos sociales y la importancia de las interacciones en la formación de sus procesos.
... Moreover, the smart cities commentary suffers from a "north-centrism" (Robinson, 2003) ailment, with most critical urban technological studies focusing overwhelmingly on the parameters, processes, and practices in the Global North (Praharaj et al., 2018a(Praharaj et al., , 2018b. Söderström et al. (2014) suggest the smart city promoters take for granted that foundational infrastructures are already in place in the cities for technology to improve their efficiency. ...
Dear colleagues and friends,
I am delighted to announce the publication of the Special issue I recently edited in the Urban Planning journal titled: "Towards Digital Urban Regeneration: Embedding Digital Technologies into Urban Renewal Processes and Development".
Urban renewal is one of the main motivations of city regeneration. Urban renewal strategies mainly relate to demolishing old buildings and redeveloping new buildings instead, improving buildings and deteriorated areas, infilling new buildings within existing urban fabric, integrating new communities into old and rolling-down areas, and so on. In parallel to this situation, the modern world is in the wake of the 4th Industrial Revolution, that aims to integrate digital spaces into spatial spaces affecting cities and their quality of life. Therefore, urban regeneration must take into consideration these digital innovations and harness the emerging technological changes into new development of urban renewal processes and decision-making approaches.
This thematic issue introduces the topic of digital urban regeneration by discussing possible methodologies and decision-making approaches and bringing together a wide range of research that tie together urban regeneration and digital technologies from different perspectives such as: modern digital planning and ICT; real vs. virtual city planning process; integrating digital twin technology into planning decision making; evaluating urban renewal alternatives based on new digital assessing approaches; integrating smart city methodologies in urban renewal planning process; and digital placemaking and post-pandemic urban regeneration development.
The PDF of this special issue is attached:
... Concentrating on the history of urban studies might dismiss this bifurcation as a remnant of disciplinary origins, recalling Edward Said's critique of geography as a discipline of empire, instrumentalized for the purpose of rule (1993). Yet the reasons for this trenchant bifurcation surely involve a multitude of overlapping factors from institutional legacies of authority (Oswin, 2019) to developmentalist fallacies (Robinson, 2003) or the conflation of difference with variation (Roy, 2016), rendering a simple answer untenable. The purpose of addressing this question, however, highlights the labor demanded of researchers outside the canon to translate their findings in "terms of theory built elsewhere" (Bhan, 2019, p. 641;Oswin, 2018). ...
The transformation of Chinese cities has engendered new forms of spatialized urban inequality. Research on these processes of segregation has captured the attention of urban researchers, generating a large and varied body of work. Yet its influence on urban theory remains constrained, reflecting the concern with the parochialism of urban theory. A review of segregation research on Chinese cities presents several intertwined findings: Chinese cities are framed in terms of their difference, mostly in contrast to Euro-American cities. This framing renders findings intelligible for an audience familiar with Chicago, but perhaps not Shenzhen. In translating the findings, the research often resorts to a methodological nationalism, which contextualizes Chinese cities in terms of their "Chinese-ness," a reductionist heuristic that elides the diversity of these cities and construes residential segregation as incommensurate with the experience of cities elsewhere. The effect of this is to limit the potential of this research to contribute to a "more global urban studies," by inscribing a kind of exceptionalism into Chinese cities.
... During COVID-19, this moor-ing exceeds the simple grafting of diversification onto the changing context of a city whose diversification is composed of differentiated new arrivals. Rather than an empirical exercise, this "provincialism" of diversification speaks conceptually to a wider Foucauldian understanding of a techno-political project of management and governance of population (Foucault 2007;Robinson 2003). Singapore's growing milieu of migrant management practices and discourses in its quest to maintain globalcity status means that any discussion of diversity must be attached to understandings of its migration regime. ...
What do measures of management during this exceptional and volatile time tell us about the regulation of migrant-driven diversity and its implications in the arrival city? Using the term “differential diversification” from Singapore, I examine how the socio-political life of the pandemic is deeply entangled with the management of low-waged labour migrants. Techno-political discourses and practices of pandemic management accelerated the state’s attempts to differently include migrant workers, revealing the bare viscerality of biopolitics already in place prior to the pandemic. I argue that diversity is ordered through a striking co-production of migrant management and pandemic management. This paper draws upon government discourses to demonstrate that measures of pandemic management contribute not only to the spatial regime of migrant management. They also articulate and rationalise the subject transformation of the low-waged migrant to the extent that, on top of being a moral risk, they are also now a medical risk.
... An increasing number of works has begun to challenge existing hierarchies in global knowledge production: Why have social science theorizations and political innovations for so long been expected to come from the West? Much of this work, whether in sociology (Connell, 2007;Keim, 2011), anthropology (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012), or human geography (Roy, 2009;Robinson, 2003Robinson, , 2011 is concerned with inequalities in knowledge production and circulation on the Global North -Global South axis. More recently there has been a renewed interest in urban geography (Sjöberg, 2014;Ferenčuhová, 2016;Tuvikene, 2016;Müller, 2018Müller, , 2019 and agro-food studies (Jehlička, Grīviņš, Visser, & Balázs, 2020) in challenging Western dominance in knowledge production from the perspective of the European East, drawing on earlier work in anthropology (Hann & Dunn, 1996;Buchowski, 2004) and human geography (Stenning, 2005;Stenning & Hörschelmann, 2008). ...
This article adds to the literature interrogating existing hierarchies in global knowledge production by examining the dominant research on post-1989 Central and East European (CEE) environmentalism. Analyses of CEE environmentalism have predominantly relied on concepts and organizational models generated by research on environmental activism and politics conducted in Western contexts, resulting in negative assessments of CEE as lacking environmental engagement. This article proposes to re-think CEE environmentalism, arguing for a more positive perspective that takes into account the various traditional practices and informal outdoor and nature-based educational activities that have a long history in CEE. These originated to promote everyday pro-environmental behaviours that are motivated by a desire for authenticity, ethical living and personal integrity. While often overlooked by both Western and CEE observers alike, these forms of CEE environmentalism are strikingly compatible with the everyday material and ‘post-postmaterial’ environmentalism recently promoted by Western-based political theorists.
... But despite obvious overlaps, there has been limited 'traffic in ideas' between the two bodies of literature (Chari and Verdery, 2009: 10, 11), which can partly be explained by the hierarchical organization of global knowledge production (see e.g. Robinson, 2003;Suchland, 2011: 845;Kołodziejczyk, and Şandru, 2012;Bartha and Eröss, 2015). 23 22 The erasure of local 'queer' histories and imposition of a colonial-racial historicity cannot be attributed solely to 'the West', however, given the fact that Soviet historicists attempted to eradicate the national histories that would otherwise destroy the monolithic Soviet multicultural narrative. ...
Drawing on an empirical study of LGBT politics in Ukraine, this article foregrounds the civilizational and yet unspoken racialization characterizing Europeanization projects in the context of EU enlargement. Our starting point is that the boundaries of Europeanness coincide with civilizational boundaries of whiteness. We make the case that Europeanization is a profoundly racialized project, where racial whiteness is unmarked as a 'natural' adjacency of the West. We treat this dual mechanism of marking and unmarking as an instance of racial displacement, arguing that the predicaments of this dual mechanism are particularly forceful in the context of EU enlargement. More specifically, the article interrogates the ways in which subtle racialized power mechanisms intersect with-while at the same time being obscured by-political instrumentalization of LGBT (lesbian-gay-bi-trans) rights and freedoms in 'transitioning' processes involving Ukraine.
... They are testimonies of the hybridisation processes that have been active simultaneously in the actual form of heritage recognition and in the modes of conservation and intervention. The specific context of this case study, as viewed 'from the South' (Robinson, 2003;Roy, 2015), offers new insights for hybridisation and heritage studies. ...
The Italian and Wudadao districts in Tianjin, China, are two of the former foreign concessions 1 established in the city during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Listed as historic sites in the late 1990s, they are now undergoing a rehabilitation process mobilised by various municipal agencies. These former concessions have become the most emblematic examples of urban regeneration and exotic heritage reutilisation in Tianjin. In this paper, we examine the preservation and rehabilitation of the former concessions from the perspective of hybridisation. In particular, we analyse the heritage trajectories of the former Italian and British concessions to identify the critical elements and forces that have shaped them. What influence did international actors have in their preservation, restoration and transformation? How did the public authorities position these districts in regard to the cultural context? How did their values and criteria evolve? What models were implemented, and how were they appropriated by local actors? We will show how this semi-colonial heritage has been integrated by the local authorities, real estate stakeholders, conservation associations and residents to produce transnational places that transcend geographies and borders.
... Una riflessione critica sulle cosiddette geografie della teoria urbana (Roy, 2009b) e sulle relazioni di potere che le sostengono è il punto di partenza del comparative urbanism, il filone di ricerca che, come vedremo nella prima parte di questo articolo, a partire dagli anni Duemila ha (ri)cominciato ad attraversare il campo degli studi urbani. Sotto la spinta del pensiero postcoloniale e delle riflessioni femministe, alcuni studiosi delle città del cosiddetto Sud globale hanno provato a mettere in questione il dominio teorico degli Stati Uniti e dell'Europa nord-occidentale e a denunciare il presunto universalismo delle categorie e dei concetti elaborati in queste aree del mondo (Robinson, 2003;Yiftachel, 2006;Parnell e Robinson, 2012;Roy, 2016). Il gesto comparativo, per riprendere l'espressione coniata da Jennifer Robinson (2011), aspira così a costruire un dialogo aperto, critico e transnazionale sull'urbano e le sue forme, capace di travalicare la dicotomia Nord-Sud e di 1 Si è scelto di lasciare l'espressione comparative urbanism nella sua forma originale per via delle problematicità connesse alla traduzione del termine urbanism, rispetto al quale "urbanistica" appare riduttivo, "urbanesimo" fuorviante. ...
La geografia urbana si confronta da sempre con la scuola di Chicago, ma più di recente la scuola di Los Angeles ha introdotto nuovi elementi di riflessione, rafforzando peraltro la componente più geografica. Tuttavia, se la scuola di Chicago è ormai studiata solo in una dimensione storica, occorre capire che direzione stiano prendendo gli studi urbani dopo le lezioni di Los Angeles. La nascita del comparative urbanism, insieme al dibattito sul Sud Globale, sta dettando le linee guida per gli studi urbani critici del XXI secolo. A questo quadro già complesso va affiancato un ragionamento sulla situazione italiana. Dopo decenni di rapporti con le teorie francesi e tedesche, negli ultimi anni anche la geografia urbana italiana ha cominciato a confrontarsi con gli urban studies anglosassoni, pur rendendosi conto che certe affermazioni non potevano essere facilmente applicate alla situazione nostrana. Quali possono essere dunque i presupposti per costruire un vero filone di geografia urbana critica in Italia?
Urban geography has always dealt with the Chicago school, but more recently the Los Angeles school has introduced new elements of reflection and strengthened the more geographical component. However, whereas the Chicago school is now considered for its historical relevance, there remains to be seen how the aftermath of the L.A. school is deploying now. Comparative urbanism and the debate on the Global South are suggesting new developments for critical urban studies. This already complex framework must be considered in the peculiar Italian situation. After decades of relations with French and German theories, in recent years Italian urban geography has also begun to confront Anglo-Saxon urban studies, while realizing that certain statements could not be easily applied to the Italian situation. What can be the prerequisites for building a real strand of critical urban geography in Italy, then?
... Over the last several decades, critical geographers have furnished some resources for analyzing persistently inequitable relations of power in the discipline, underscoring geography's roots in colonial projects of domination and in ideologies of white supremacy, both of which gave rise to the false theory Environmental Determinism, amongst other problematics. Marxist, feminist, post-modern, post-structuralist, subaltern and anti-colonial, queer, and indigenous geographies (among others) have worked to confront oppressive pasts and presents and envision alternative forms of scholarship (e.g., Sidaway 2000;Robinson 2003;Gilmartin and Berg 2007). Physical geography and cognate disciplines have also seen diverse efforts to pursue feminist and anti-colonial science (Bracken and Mawdsley 2004;Lave et al. 2014;Carey et al. 2016;Liboiron, Tironi and Calvillo 2018). ...
Over the past two decades, several reviewers have elucidated the history and current status of geography as a discipline in Nepal (Panday 1998; Subedi and Poudel 2005; Koirala 2008). The most recent of these are Jagannath Adhikari (2010) and Bhim Prasad Subedi’s (2014) surveys, which together provide a thorough overview of the field. They highlight key concepts and leading scholars, while also offering a detailed study of the pedagogy of geography in Nepal’s educational systems. In this article, we aim to complement these reviews, focusing specifically on the contributions of geography in Nepal to the three overarching themes of this special issue of SINHAS: sustainability, infrastructure, and disaster. Our goal in the paper is twofold: first, to draw out several key features of geographical approaches to sustainability, infrastructure, and disaster in Nepal; and second, to discuss how Nepal-based geographical work has contributed to broader debates on these themes. The dramatic and concentrated variability of Nepal’s physical geography, which both informs and is paralleled by diverse socio-political topographies, brings into focus the importance of geographic sensibilities—including relational attention to geographical difference and an understanding of place and space as (re)produced through multi-scalar bio-physical and socio-political processes.
... Prakash (2008a), Çınar and Bender (2007), or Huyssen (2008), all state the importance of representing the modern city across [17] different geographical environments, regardless of categories such as Western cities, First and Third world cities, Global cities, etc. Ultimately, they push forward a more cosmopolitan and postcolonial geographical knowledge (Robinson, 2003). Jennifer Robinson's contribution to this challenge is by understanding all cities as "ordinary". ...
... Marxist, feminist, post-modern, post-structuralist, subaltern and anti-colonial, queer, and indigenous geographies (among others) have worked to confront oppressive pasts and presents and envision alternative forms of scholarship (e.g. Sidaway 2000;Robinson 2003;Gilmartin and Berg 2007). Physical geography and cognate disciplines have also seen diverse efforts to pursue feminist and anti-colonial science (Bracken and Mawdsley 2004;Lave et al. 2014;Carey et al. 2016;Liboiron, Tironi and Calvillo 2018). ...
Over the past two decades, several reviewers have elucidated the history and current status of geography as a discipline in Nepal (Panday 1998; Subedi and Poudel, P. 2005; Koirala, H. 2008). The most recent of these are Jagannath Adhikari (2010) and Bhim Prasad Subedi’s (2014) surveys, which together provide a thorough overview of the field. They highlight key concepts and leading scholars, while also offering a detailed study of the pedagogy of geography in Nepal’s educational systems. In this article, we aim to complement these reviews, focusing specifically on the contributions of geography in Nepal to the three overarching themes of this special issue of SINHAS: sustainability, infrastructure, and disaster. Our goal in the paper is twofold: first, to draw out several key features of geographical approaches to sustainability, infrastructure, and disaster in Nepal; and second, to discuss how Nepal-based geographical work has complicated broader debates on these themes. The dramatic and concentrated variability of Nepal’s physical geography, which both informs and is paralleled by diverse socio-political topographies, brings into focus the importance of geographic sensibilities—including relational attention to geographical difference and an understanding of place and space as (re)produced through multi-scalar bio-physical and socio-political processes.
... Through this lens, a closer look at processes of governance in cities of the West rapidly unveils the state's inability to fully mediate processes of governance and points to the room for manoeuvre that is essential for understanding the ways in which informality can operate and thrive (Haid, 2016; see also literature on street-level bureaucracy and practices of discretion, e.g. Lipsky, 1980;Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2000;2003). Bringing debates on governance and informality into dialogue with each other focuses attention on informality as a governmental practice of flexibility, as well as on discretion in decision-making processes--especially in the everyday. ...
Understandings of informality commonly derive from research undertaken in states perceived as lacking the capacity to regulate the practices of their populations. This Interventions forum aims to expand the geographical parameters of empirical research on urban informality. A more global approach, we argue, also necessitates questioning assumptions that undergird this concept––in particular the underlying conception of the state. In this vein, this collection of papers aims to rethink theories of the state through the lens of informality, and vice versa, to inform and refine the concept of informality through a more thorough understanding of states. In so doing, the contributions engage with concepts that have been central both to theories of the state and to the study of informality, namely governance, agency, legitimacy, sovereignty and legality. Following this introduction setting out our theoretical approach, the Interventions forum unites five empirical studies that discuss the nexus of informality and states in contexts that have been researched less extensively from this perspective, each tackling one of the above-mentioned concepts. Based on these different entry points, the papers provide novel angles on a state-theoretical understanding of informality. A concluding essay brings these approaches together, reflecting on the possibilities of translating concepts to different sites.
... By unsettling the certainties associated with modernist or Enlightenment thinking, poststructuralism 4 has been, and continues to be, profoundly influential in the humanities and critical social sciences. Within contemporary human geography, it is noteworthy for being at the origin of engagements with actor-network theory (Latour 1996(Latour , 2005Law and Hassard 1999), postcolonialism (Sidaway 2000;Blunt and McEwan 2003;Robinson 2003), postdevelopment theory (Escobar 1995;Agarwal 1996;Cooper and Packard 1997), and posthumanism studies (Braun 2004;Whatmore 2004). This post-1960s intellectual movement 5 that countered the perceived rigidities of structuralism 6 has led to several theoretical shifts since the 1980s (Woodard and Jones 2009), which are central to how geographers frame the issue of climate change today. ...
This article calls for a stronger engagement by geographers with the concept of socionature as a vehicle for guiding adaptation thinking in development planning. Drawing on literatures from poststructuralist geographies, it argues for a relational, hybrid ontology of climate change adaptation grounded in multiple perspectives, knowledges, and more-than-human relations. Going beyond this stance, a framework based on the idea of planning with climate change is proposed for a revised approach to adaptation that calls for more-than-social planning practices embedded in radically more integrative planning processes and the redistribution of power across the climate and planning systems. The article ends by highlighting some of the key challenges that such a project faces for scholars working in the field of planning and development research. Key Words: climate change adaptation, development, human geography, planning, poststructuralist theory.
My commentary situates Desiree Fields' lecture within a long‐standing movement that, paying attention to real estate data and techniques of property, turned the housing market into a theoretical machine. I understand her intervention as a fourth and pivotal conceptual moment in the study of housing markets and inequalities for the discipline of geography, for it brings racial capitalism and settler colonialism as theoretical starting points to analyse the political economy of housing in the era of digital property technologies. As such, her lecture opens up a welcome, ambitious, yet also uncertain terrain to advance global urban theory under platform capitalism and stimulate relational approaches in housing studies. Discussing the regularities through which race, technology and property shape housing and wealth inequalities across variegated sites of market‐making provides a conceptual horizontality that acknowledges the United States as a testing ground, rather than a ground truth, for the production of geographical knowledge.
Rampant suburbanisation is one of the most visible changes evidenced in cities throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the past three decades. In this paper, we analyse how suburbanisation unfolded in East Germany after reunification. We do this against the background of ongoing debates about the usefulness and meaning of the term post-socialism that have questioned the self-enclosed spatiality of the concept and suggest giving the concept of neoliberalisation a more central role in analysing the changes experienced in this part of the world. We show that the suburbanisation process in East Germany rested on three neoliberal policy orientations: (1) extensive investment stimuli for the construction of new rental housing, (2) promotion of home ownership and (3) the privileging of suburban locations through planning gaps. Since all these policies are based on neoliberal ideas, we argue that neoliberalisation and post-socialist reform agendas have appeared as two sides of the same coin. Against this background, we advocate putting the developments that came after socialism at the centre of the research and call for a new generation of studies on post-socialist neoliberalisation.
This article discusses recent activism on public statues from a post-colonial perspective. First, it outlines a post-colonial concern with the notion of subaltern space, focusing on the relation of space-making to subjectivation. Then, it analyses distinct theoretical insights coming from post-colonial literature that deal with the theme of political space and resistance, addressing in particular the thought of Mbembe, hooks, and Ahmed. Finally, it discusses activism over colonial statues in light of this theoretical approach, interpreting activism on statues as a decolonial intervention that directly addresses questions of representation and democracy.
This commentary takes as its point of departure van Heur’s (2023) What, where and who is urban studies? On research centres in an unequal world. The paper's four concluding propositions, resting on an empirical dataset generated through the Scopus-registered 2011 to 2021 publications of the more than 1000 researchers affiliated to 30 university-housed urban studies centres, constitute an important contribution to thinking through one potential version of the future of urban studies. Such is the richness of this paper that a commentary might highlight all manner of points. I will contain myself here to two, which likely say as much about me as about the initial paper, such is the nature of these sorts of commentaries. My points relate to definitional indifferences and formal/functional equivalences.
Publicado originalmente em um extenso volume sobre Michael Foucault e a Geografia, o texto traça as relações entre o filósofo francês e o pós-colonialismo. Articulando referências fundamentais para as teorias pós-coloniais, Legg explora o uso de Foucault no trabalho de Edward Said e outros autores vinculados ao Grupo de Estudos Subalternos, apresentando a apropriação do filósofo “para além da província europeia”.
In informality studies in a general and informal settlement, in particular, the informal is represented based on a dualistic approach concerning the formal issue, and such distinction is a social construction derived from the mainstream development discourse in which, the exchange (instead of consuming) and speculative (instead of realistic concept) are used as the criteria for spatial development. In this case, any space constructed out of this meaning is labeled as undeveloped and informal spaces that are the deepest deviations from the ideal development trajectory. Formality-informality border rooted in modernism and capitalism trends to encourage "non-west others" to pursue idealist development path by employing humanitarian colonialism, authoritarianism, and technocracy. The dominated urban planning and policymaking in Iran is also derived from such dualistic thought which has evoled from deconstruction of informal settlements to empowering their residents to overcome this social reality. Due to the increasing growth in the population living in informal settlements over recent years in Iran, it seems that it is time to question the success of dominated thought. Therefore, the present study aimed at going beyond such dual-dominated thought by introducing some alternatives to the development of current and relevant conceptual constructions, including undeveloped, third world, informal settlements, and so forth. This requires a radical reading of the urban informality and informal settlement by adopting "post-development critical discourse". According to urban studies derived from the "southern world", alternatives, such as subaltern and everyday urbanism, are introduced for the dominated urbanism in the world. The research structure has been organized based on the critical paradigm and philosophical framework that consider reality as a complex and dynamic procedure with several levels. In this case, the hidden level of reality must be analyzed to leave the surface and actual behind and discover the deep structures. Accordingly, this study was conducted to provide some teachings based on the findings obtained from the analytical-critical review of world theories. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to indicate the necessity of a critical approach to revising the mainstream urban development and planning regarding informal settlement in Iran. Findings showed that such teachings are based on the study of daily life and lived reality in informal settlements to scrutinize the generators and mechanisms of such lived space. In this case, some new theories and conceptual alternatives can be presented beyond the stereotypes and dualities in dominated planning. Subaltern experiences help produce the theoretical alternatives and provincialize the authoritative knowledge geography and theory production. The concept of informality is beyond the governmental rules and regulations without confirming dual perception and identifying dynamic, sophisticated, and robust relationships between formal and informal activities. Formal/informal distinction is presented as a fluidity, instability, and situation movement. Formal and informal relations are neither fixed nor abstract concepts. Subaltern urbanism describes informal settlements as a context of residence, livelihood, self-organization, and policies, while this is not an integrated theory like global urbanism. Therefore, teachings of such alternative theories generated in local communities in the southern world can pave the way for revision, conceptualization, and social construction of an alternative to informal settlement reality in Iran.
Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area-based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case-study cities. The article examines the claims of the so-called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on-ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT-driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.
The geographical literature on urban policymaking has made a considerable contribution to enabling understandings of the relational processes involved in assembling local policies. Reviewing this literature’s journey from its origins in political science to its recent embrace of poststructuralism, this article argues that the debates and discussions involved have arrived at a point of core epistemological tension. Taking its own conceptual inspiration from thinking interurban space topologically, the article thus raises a number of questions regarding the assumptions associated with terms such as mobility and circulation, persistent in the languages of policy research and practice. Exploring these questions through a post-colonial ethnography of sustainable city visions in Lusaka, Zambia, and Sacramento, California, the article subsequently makes a series of contributions regarding the way policymaking regimes remain powerfully situated in space and time. To properly account for the workings of power and its ability to colonize policy practices, the article challenges us to therefore reflect on the value of transitioning away from thinking about policy ideas as capable of being mobile, circulated from place to place, and to instead unpack how particular territorial representations of place are (re)produced (including by geographers) within the confines of hegemonic ideas about city futures. © 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
This chapter aims to share my experience as a tourism researcher with women who are embarking on a career in tourism research now or will do so in future.
The purpose of this book is to serve as a collective mentoring platform where today’s generation of women tourism researchers can share their experiences, observations and advice with future generations.
This chapter argues that the urban world is increasingly a ‘southern’ urban world. Over the last half-century or more, urbanisation has proceeded far more rapidly in the Global South than the Global North. Analysts of Global South urbanisation critique the frequent use of analytical toolkits developed in the Global North to explain urban processes in the Global South, and therefore this chapter seeks to build from ‘southern’ understandings of Global South urbanisation. While great diversity exists across the Global South, one can nevertheless identify some common themes. This chapter highlights and discusses variations upon five of these themes across the urban Global South, bringing in examples from Asia, Africa and Latin America: legacies of colonialism and imperialism; rapid processes of urbanisation; sprawling urban form; informal economy and settlement; and variability in governance and service delivery. The chapter’s final main segment analyses the implications of the general themes for urban ecologies in the Global South.
This chapter opens an introductory discussion by offering a literature-based overview of the global trends of smart cities worldwide. It points out the role that the digital corporations played and continue to play in the popularity and fast growth of smart cities. It provides a detailed description of how the IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge came about as a global enabler of smart cities. Nevertheless, this chapter turns the table by focusing on 135 cities participating in the Challenge. This chapter sets the scene for the rest of this book by providing an index of all participating cities. In doing so, it points out this book's limitation as it is, by no means, an all-inclusive narration of the “whole story” of smart cities. This chapter concludes by promising that the journey throughout this book will enhance our understanding of the state of smart city development worldwide.
This chapter starts by a literature-based overview of the geographical distribution of smart cities around the world and opens a discussion about the concerning North–South divide in the smart city discourse. Despite the complexity of urbanization and the fast pace of smart city development worldwide, smart cities of the South are vastly understudied. This chapter offers an overall analysis of all cities participating in the Smarter Cities Challenge based on their placement in the Global South versus the North and the smart dimension(s) prioritized. The overall analysis is followed by summary accounts of a few case study cities involved with the Challenge to offer tangible narrations of the ways in which the North–South divide plays out in the smart city approaches taken. The overall goal of this chapteris to clarify whether or how North–South divide matters in the ways in which cities around the world adopt smart solutions while accounting for the socio-economic variables.
This chapter synthesizes the learnings throughout this book and offers an integrated analysis of smart cities. It revisits the original question on the global state of smart city development and the ways in which this is shaped by the urban context. In particular, it focuses on the Smarter Cities Challenge and encapsulates the discussions throughout this book to understand whether and/or how geography (North–South divide), city size, governance (the levels of democracy), and (strategic) urban planning—each individually and in combination with each other—matter in the ways in which cities around the world adopt smart solutions. This chapter concludes by a conversation about future directions, informed by the global analysis of smart city development enabled via the Smarter Cities Challenge.
The past two decades have seen the development of a rich body of scholarship focusing on South African urban settlements. An extensive narrative has emerged on the changing spatialities of the broader urban system, but the representation of South African urban areas remains surprisingly incomplete. The overwhelming majority of research deals with aspects of urban poverty and aims at informing policy and implementation responses that can provide an alternative urban future – with seemingly limited success.The contention in this paper does not challenge the notion that elevated levels of urbanising poverty represent a future development trajectory of the so-called “real African cities” to which scholars like Pieterse refer. However, such an observation requires considerable refinement in the South African urban context. The growing number of urban residents is not necessarily poor. In fact, the number of relatively wealthy, in Africa generally and South Africa in particular, is rapidly expanding. It is the contention of this paper that, while there might be a moral imperative to investigate poor urban lives, there is similarly an empirical and theoretical obligation to investigate beyond the urban poor. The paper argues that the current imbalance in urban scholarship, focusing too heavily on the urban poor, allows the relatively wealthy to reproduce urban spaces as they please, with little scrutiny from scholars and policy makers. It suggests that, as long as we do not take the realities of these “other” urban dwellers seriously, there is little hope of addressing the fragmentation of the urban form and exclusion of the poor so typical of South African cities. Although existing scholarship aims to integrate currently fragmented cities, ignoring those who are not poor could lead urban scholars to implicitly reinforce South Africa's dualistic cities.
This article reviews the status and recent developments of historical geography in China during 2006–2020. The decentralisation of research institutions and academics characterised this era of economic growth. Research topics in the field of historical geography also diversified tremendously. However, Chinese historical geography education and research is overly skewed towards history. Importantly, the dearth of original history and philosophy of geography studies results in a lack of consensus over the nature of historical geography. Developments in the history of cartography could serve as a remedy for this crisis. From the perspective of decolonial geography, historical geography in China is positioned in relation to that developed in the West. Furthermore, the difficulties and disorderliness in reshaping a unique and deep‐rooted geographical tradition are discussed.
Research from the 1980s by Ronan Paddison, Allan Findlay and colleagues on ‘the post-colonial city' and ‘the Arab city' is examined. Distinguishing between ‘post-colonial' (as periodization) and ‘postcolonial' (as critique), the paper traces how elements of the latter permeated what Paddison and colleagues claimed about the former. A sensitivity to urban ‘models', histories and geographies beyond the Global North was evident, anticipating subsequent postcolonial moves to engage fully with the possibilities of multiple ‘other' urban trajectories, lives, plans and capacities for change. It is also suggested that, inspired by Janet Abu-Lughod, Paddison and colleagues were working towards a postcolonial ‘comparative urbanism'.
This critical commentary introduces the Summer Institute in Urban Studies (SIUS) in the context of the wider inter-disciplinary discussions over the future of urban studies. It outlines the context out of which the institute first took place in Manchester in 2014 and how it has evolved across four subsequent iterations, the most recent of which was held in Singapore in July 2018. We document and discuss the profile of those who have participated in the four institutes and reflect upon some of the challenges that have emerged through discussions on the current state of the field of urban studies and its various possible futures. In conclusion, this critical commentary reflects on what we have learnt from the four institutes to date as we plan for #SIUS2020.
This chapter overviews how post‐ and decolonial approaches have had significant impacts upon geographical knowledge production over the past three decades. It shows how a series of activities in South India spurred a number of events that stretched across the world. Therefore, anticolonialism is a broad range of activity that can be seen to be acting against the similarly broad range of practices and by‐products of colonial rule that include racism, militarism, resource exploitation, land dispossession, and so on. This can include resistance to internal and external colonialisms (i.e. within/outside a nation‐state's domestic borders, respectively), which also encompass a number of different practices. Anticolonial geographies are therefore closely linked to, but different from post‐ and decolonial approaches. They differ from postcolonial approaches because of their explicitly political nature. It is also a somewhat broader concept than decoloniality. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
Postcoloniality and the perspective of history culturalism as hegemonic ideology and liberating practice the postcolonial aura - Third World criticism in the age of global capitalism the global in the local Chinese history and the question of orientalism there is more in the Rim than meets the eye - some thoughts on the Pacific idea three worlds or one, or many? - the reconfiguration of global relations under contemporary capitalism postcolonial or postrevolutionary? - the problem of history in postcolonial criticism the postmodernization of production and its organization - flexible production, work and culture the past as legacy and project - postcolonial criticism in the perspective of indigenous historicism.
Concerned with the relations among the population dynamics, social organisation, and culture of human populations and the environments in which they live, ecological anthropology provides a materialist examination of the range of human activity. This review examines the theoretical assumptions and methods adopted in each of the three stages of development in ecological anthropology, namely that characterised by the work of Julian Steward and Leslie White, the second which is termed neofunctionalism and neoevolutionism, and the third called processual ecological anthropology. -John*Sheail
There is a tendency in the post-modernist literature to assume that the globalization process characterized by mobility of people, goods, capital, and ideas, and the subsequent erosion of spatially bounded social worlds (Stepputat 1994: 176) has led to deterritorialization of identity and, as a result, people, regardless of their territorial origin, have become or are in the process of becoming citizens of a deterritorialized global world. This paper argues that the globalization process has not been accompanied by opening of borders to those who are forced to flee in search of safety. Though globalization has effectively reduced the capability of smaller states to shape their national macro-economic policies, their ability or determination to deny access to asylum seekers has not diminished. In fact global interconnectedness notwithstanding, the propensity of many societies, including formerly 'cohesive' ones, to define themselves on the basis of their ethnic, national or spatial origin, or religion, as well as culturally and ethnically distinct territorial locations, by excluding those whom they consider as 'others', has never been greater. Thus, place still remains a major repository of rights and membership. The assumption that identities are deterritorialized and state territories are readily there for the taking, regardless of place or national origin, has no objective existence outside the minds of its proponents. In a world where rights such as equal treatment, access to sources of livelihoods, social services, rights of freedom of movement and residence, etc. are apportioned on the basis of territorially anchored identities, the identity people gain from their association with a particular place is an indispensable instrument to a socially and economically fulfilling life. The corollary is that despite the process of globalization, repatriation still represents one of the most important solutions to the problem of involuntary displacement.
An engaging look at the cultural legacy of the twentieth-century city and how it affects our ideas of community and democracy. Paris, Berlin, London, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles--these define "the city" in the world's consciousness. James Donald takes us on a psychic journey to these places that have inspired artists, writers, architects, and filmmakers for centuries. Considering the cultural and political implications of the "urban imaginary," Donald explores the pleasures and challenges of modern living, contending that the imagined city remains the best lens for a future of democratic community. How can we think of Chicago without recalling the grittiness of The Asphalt Jungle's back alleys, or of London without the dank, foggy atmosphere so often evoked by Dickens? When de Certeau explores what it means to walk through a city, or Foucault dissects the elements of the modern attitude, what are they telling us about modernity itself? Through a discussion of these and many other questions about urban thought, Donald demonstrates how artists and social critics have seen the city as the locus not just of vanity, squalor, and injustice, but also of civilized society's highest aspirations. Imagining the Modern City also looks at how artists have shaped cities through their creation of public spaces, sculpture, and architecture--art forms that help determine our ideas about our place in the urban environment. Planners and architects such as Otto Wagner, Le Corbusier, and Bernard Tschumi present us with real and possible cities, showing a way forward to alternative social futures, Donald asserts. The modern city provides both a culturally resonant imagined space and a physical place for the everyday life of its residents. Imagining the Modern City is a rich and dazzling exploration of the ways cities stir and shape our consciousness. "In Imagining the Modern City, Donald, a British professor of communications and cultural studies based in Australia, seeks to explain the uneasy interaction between city and citizen by drawing together literary, cinematic, architectural, and sociological evocations of the metropolis from the past two centuries. He begins with the stratified geography of Dickens' London, in which neighborhood determined social position, then moves on to Baudelaire's changing Paris, the German-Jewish sociologist Georg Simmel's imperial Berlin, the seedy Chicago of The Asphalt Jungle, Joyce's Dublin, and finally, the hallucinatory visions of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Tim Burton's Gotham City, and modern-day Singapore. Donald believes that all of these cities are not so much physical places as constructs of media and mind." Liesl Schillinger in Metropolis "Donald's fluid writing weaves familiar scholarly territory into a warm and inviting narrative that reflects his own passion for the city. A most important contribution, the sort that ends in a question mark rather than a period." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space "Cities are back in fashion, at least in theory. Imagining the Modern City juxtaposes imagination an politics, the city and modernity. The panache of Donald's writing and his integration of biography and fiction, visual images and critical reflection on the vast array of popular cultural versions of the modern city make Imagining the Modern City both page turning and illuminating. A quirky and personable style combined with a judicious use of photos, drawings, and films adds interest and critical insight." Thesis Eleven "A stimulating and engaging meditation on the city and the urban imaginary that explores both the pleasures and the challenges of modern living. Donald uses the culture of cities to open up important questions about modernity and, particularly, modern political culture." Kevin Robins "The city tugs at the imagination and the imagination tugs the city. In an exemplary fashion, Donald shows the truth of this statement. An acute and often surprising book that shows real sympathy for the city, warts and all." Nigel Thrift "To dare to rewrite the political map of the city as a poetic one, as Donald does, is to insist that this other, imaginative side of the metropolis is as important to how we live the city, walk its streets and dream our selves, as are the political expectancies we think it embodies." Iain Chambers James Donald is professor of communications and cultural studies at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia.
This paper discusses the difficulties facing the post-apartheid metropolitan government of Johannesburg as it reforms itself, seeking to better respond to the needs of all its citizens, while also attracting new investment. These difficulties include high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality as well as the apartheid legacy of “separate development” with its large backlog of poor quality housing and inadequate basic services, much of it concentrated in former “black townships” and peripheral informal settlements. Limited budgets and overloaded bureaucracy have limited the scale, quality and speed of delivery. Meanwhile, the need for organizational change and for good fiscal performance compete for attention and resources with poverty reduction and with the need for a more integrated, cross-sectoral poverty reduction policy. The paper ends with a discussion of how the principal challenges facing Johannesburg are also challenges for contemporary
urban governance in many other cities.
British imperialism has carved its way through space: possessing and ordering territories across the globe. This spatial legacy is not a relic of the past, it lingers in the present and shapes the nature of postcolonial futures. This book examines struggles over urban space in three contemporary First World cities in an attempt to map the real geographies of colonialism and postcolonialism. From London, the one-time heart of the empire, to Perth and Brisbane, scenes of Aboriginal claims for the sacred in the space of the modern city, the author emphasises the global geography of the local and unravels the spatialised cultural politics of postcolonial processes. The book forms the basis for understanding imperialism over space and time, and is a recognition of the unruly spatial politics of race and nation, nature and culture, past and present.
In the first section of the paper a few general remarks concerning three lineages of universalism are outlined; these comments act as an introduction to a more detailed examination of 'Euro-Americanism'. In this second section, the main focus of analysis falls on examples taken from the literature of critical urban studies. In the final part, a briefly stated case is made for learning from the South. It is suggested that it is not only crucial to question all forms of Western ethnocentrism, but that by scrutinizing critically the historical constitution of the relations between the First World and the societies of the periphery, the realities of the West can be better comprehended. In fact, it is argued that without such a connection First World geographers will not be able to grasp the meanings and dispositions of the societies in which they live, and in this important sense will remain 'intellectual prisoners of the West'.
This paper discusses the difficulties facing the post-apartheid metropolitan government of Johannesburg as it reforms itself, seeking to better respond to the needs of all its citizens, while also attracting new investment. These difficulties include high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality as well as the apartheid legacy of “separate development” with its large backlog of poor quality housing and inadequate basic services, much of it concentrated in former “black townships” and peripheral informal settlements. Limited budgets and overloaded bureaucracy have limited the scale, quality and speed of delivery. Meanwhile, the need for organizational change and for good fiscal performance compete for attention and resources with poverty reduction and with the need for a more integrated, cross-sectoral poverty reduction policy. The paper ends with a discussion of how the principal challenges facing Johannesburg are also challenges for contemporary urban governance in many other cities.
Rethinking questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation, Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity - one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. In The Location of Culture, he uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.
This essay compares the imaginative geographies of Egypt produced by Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert as they travelled up the Nile Valley and back to Cairo in 1849-50. Their experiences are used to emphasize the physicality (rather than merely the textuality) of travel writing. The differences between their imaginative geographies and in particular between their representations of landscape, space and people, illuminate the complex and fractured formation of Orientalism as a constellation of power, knowledge and spatiality, and its entanglements with patriarchy, sexuality and various colonialisms.
In this collage of essays, meditations, poems, and travel reports, Clifford takes travel and its difficult companion, translation, as openings into a complex modernity. He contemplates a world ever more connected yet not homogeneous, a global history proceeding from the fraught legacies of exploration, colonization, capitalist expansion, immigration, labor mobility, and tourism. Ranging from Highland New Guinea to northern California, from Vancouver to London, he probes current approaches to the interpretation and display of non-Western arts and cultures. Wherever people and things cross paths and where institutional forces work to discipline unruly encounters, Clifford's concern is with struggles to displace stereotypes, to recognize divergent histories, to sustain dqpostcolonialdq and dqtribaldq identities in contexts of domination and globalization. Travel, diaspora, border crossing, self-location, the making of homes away from home: these are transcultural predicaments for the late twentieth century. The map that might account for them, the history of an entangled modernity, emerges here as an unfinished series of paths and negotiations, leading in many directions while returning again and again to the struggles and arts of cultural encounter, the impossible, inescapable tasks of translation.
Introduction 1:Before Apartheid 2:Administering Apartheid 3:State Apartheid 4:Urban Apartheid 5:Personal Apartheid 6:Resistance to Apartheid 7:International Response to Apartheid 8:Dismantling Apartheid 9:Legacy of Apartheid
Om kulturens rolle i det 19. århundredes og det tidlige 20. århundredes kolonipolitik.
South Africa's transition to democracy earned its place among the ‘miracles’ of the twentieth century. The transition not only symbolised the end of a protracted struggle against apartheid but also ushered in a new era of the reconstruction of state and society. My intention in this paper is to analyse the reconstruction of the post-apartheid state in South Africa against the backdrop of the post-colonial state in Africa. The paper focuses on territorial restructuring and nation-building as some of the main challenges facing the new polity. Such challenges, I argue, are not unique to South Africa, but are a familiar feature of the post-colony on the continent. However, South Africa faces those challenges against a pessimistic record of its counterparts in Africa, and under different circumstances. Notwithstanding that pessimism, the question that is central to the analysis presented here is how South Africa has responded to challenges of territorial restructuring and nation-building.
Located in the analysis of spatial power and democratic politics, this paper brings together three guiding questions. First, given the fact that inside the West much theorization of power and social relations has assumed a geohistorical context that is intrinsically Western, to what extent and in what ways does this particularity constrain the conceptual and thematic effectiveness of the perspectives employed and especially in relation to the politics of democratization? Second, as it is most appropriate to argue that power shapes social identities, and that democratic politics cannot dispense with power, a key question becomes how to generate relations of power that are compatible with democratic values and opposed to ethnocentric privilege. Third, how can we open up a discussion of democratic politics so that the geographies of democratization can be explored in a way that might broaden our vision of power and geopolitics? These questions are pursued in the context of the coloniality of power and an exploration of the territoriality of democratization in the Peruvian and Bolivian cases. The overall objective is to go beyond the limits of a Euro - Americanist frame and open up the analysis of the complex and dynamic geographies of democracy.
In this paper we address the ways in which global processes of imperialism helped to constitute the cultural geography of the capital cities of Europe. London is our focus, not least because its representation as an imperial city during the modern period was particularly fraught with difficulty. In the first section of the paper we consider the value and limitations of a 'post-colonial' perspective, and specifically the extent to which the discourse of imperial cities was European rather than national in character. In the second section we turn to London, widening the conventional focus on the ceremonial core at Westminster to consider a number of alternative 'hearts of empire' sites which were also claimed as central places in the landscape of the imperial city. Here we question the assumption that London 'became' imperial in a circumscribed area and only for a brief moment in the late-Victorian and Edwardian era. In order to develop the argument that the 'imperial' was not merely the preserve of policymakers in Whitehall, we then consider the role of imperial culture in shaping a variety of other urban landscapes, especially the swelling London suburbs. Last, we address the contradictions and tensions in the idea of 'imperial London' as it developed around the turn of the 19th century.
This article is about debates concerning the ‘postcolonial’. The term bears a variety of inter-related sets of meanings. In the first place ‘postcolonial’ has been used in reference to a condition that succeeds colonial rule. But ‘postcolonial’ also signifies a set of theoretical perspectives. Mindful of this diversity, I present a tentative and speculative geography of the varied and complicated senses (and non-senses) of the conditions and approaches purported to be described by the term.
This paper attempts to combine critical feminist and post-colonial approaches to suggest how more inclusive histories of geography may be written. Drawing on the specific example of women travellers in West Africa during the late nineteenth century, the paper proposes strategies to disrupt the masculinist and eurocentric construction of ‘the geographical tradition’. These strategies include moving beyond a disciplinary focus, disrupting essentialisms, interrogating whiteness and authority, and attempting to reveal the historical agency and resistance of colonized others. The problematic and antagonist relationship between the recovery of the agency of white women and the recovery of non-Western agency and resistance is recognized, and it is suggested that countering eurocentrism requires a rethinking of current forms of countering paternity.
Urban poverty is a policy issue of growing significance in post-apartheid South Africa. In terms of the new Constitution the developmental role of local governments is given considerable attention. Against a background analysis of the best practice of local anti-poverty strategies in the developing world, this paper reviews the experience of eight case studies of local economic development (LED) initiatives. The case studies review a cluster of research findings from South African metropolitan areas (Midrand, Port Elizabeth, inner-city Durban, Khayelitsha and Winterveld) followed by issues from secondary cities (Nelspruit, Harrismith) and small towns (Stutterheim). A key conclusion from the experience of post-apartheid South Africa is that LED practitioners are currently struggling to find means to integrate their LED initiatives with the task of poverty alleviation.
The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in the concept of place in anthropology, geography, and political ecology. “Place” — or, more accurately, the defense of constructions of place — has also become an important object of struggle in the strategies of social movements. This paper is situated at the intersection of conversations in the disciplines about globalization and place, on the one hand, and conversation in social movements about place and political strategy, on the other. By arguing against a certain globalocentrism in the disciplines that tends to effect an erasure of place, the paper suggests ways in which the defense of place by social movements might be constituted as a rallying point for both theory construction and political action. The paper proposes that place-based struggles might be seen as multi-scale, network-oriented subaltern strategies of localization. The argument is illustrated with the case of the social movement of black communities of the Pacific rainforest region of Colombia.
A critique of South African research on the compound provides a valuable entry point for the analysis of interviews collected over an 18 month period in a South African women’s prison. Drawing on the theoretical questions raised in this literature and geographical concepts of the interrelationship of identity and space, the prison is mapped out in terms of the physical space and the signification that these spaces hold for prisoners and prison authorities. Using the Foucauldian concept of panopticism, the prison is examined as an example of a complete and austere institution. Prisoner resistances to the institution are documented and the prison codes of conduct around masculine and feminine sexual identities are critiqued. The response of prison staff and heterosexual prisoners to same-sex sexuality and butch-femme roles is analysed in terms of Butler’s concept of performative transgressions and the geographical work on social exclusion.
This book develops a fresh and challenging perspective on the city. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of material and texts, it argues that too much contemporary urban theory is based on nostalgia for a humane, face-to-face and bounded city. Amin and Thrift maintain that the traditional divide between the city and the rest of the world has been perforated through urban encroachment, the thickening of the links between the two, and urbanization as a way of life. They outline an innovative sociology of the city that scatters urban life along a series of sites and circulations, reinstating previously suppressed areas of contemporary urban life: from the presence of non-human activity to the centrality of distant connections. The implications of this viewpoint are traced through a series of chapters on power, economy and democracy. This concise and accessible book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociology, geography, urban studies, cultural studies and politics.
Attention to global and world cities has directed the field of urban studies to the significance of international and transnational processes in shaping city economies. This article evaluates these approaches, from a position off their maps. I argue that the circulation of these approaches in academic and policy realms adversely impacts on cities which do not fall into these categories by setting up the idea of the global city as a,regulating fiction', a standard towards which they aspire. It establishes a small sector of the global economy as most desirable in planning the future of cities. By contrast, mega-cities function as the dramatic 'other' of world and global cities, and highlight the developmentalist discourse through which most cities in poor countries are assessed as fundamentally lacking in qualities of city-ness. I argue that the long-standing categories of western/third-world cities have been translated into the apparently transnational accounts of global and world cities. Western cities continue to be the primary site of production of apparently unlocated urban theory; so-called third-world cities (and other cities off the map of the world cities cartography) are interpreted through a developmentalist lens and, where they are referred to at all, are framed in terms of 'difference' or irrelevance. This article draws attention to the emergence of an alternative set of theoretical approaches, which are more inclusive in their geographical reach and which are concerned with the diverse dynamics of ordinary cities. These approaches have not yet realized that they have the potential to broaden the base for theorizing about cities and, with this in mind, the article explores the potential for a more cosmopolitan urban theory. The policy stakes in this are high, and the article notes that there are important political reasons to promote the analysis of ordinary cities in the face of the persistence of ambitions in many cities to become 'world cities'.
‘Editorial: Postcolonialism and the politics of race’
- Jackson P.
‘Time's arrows: Imaginative pasts and nostalgic futures’
- Barmé G.