Inspired by postcolonial critiques, urban studies today is characterized by conceptual and methodological experimentation in pursuit of a more global approach to understanding cities. The challenge ...is to develop methods and theoretical practices which allow conceptual innovation to emerge from any urban situation or urbanization process, sustaining wider conversations while insisting that concepts are open to revision. This maps well on to the core methodological problematic of comparison. Mindful of the strong limits to comparison presented by conventional quasi-scientific methods, this paper sets out the basis for a reformatted comparative method. A new grounding for comparison is proposed, specific to the field of the urban, and a new typology of tactics for undertaking urban comparative research is suggested. The paper weaves together classic approaches and more recent innovations in comparison from within urban studies with a wider philosophical analysis of the issues at stake in reframing the architecture of comparison. The paper stands as an invitation to practise global urban studies differently – comparatively – but also to practise comparison differently, in a way that opens urban studies to a more global repertoire of potential insights. The paper develops this invitation and methodological quest through Marxist political-economy; through actually-existing vernacular comparative practices of urban studies; and through insights gleaned from Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical project. The last section of the paper explains how this new vocabulary of comparative method can be put to work through a review of some recent experiments in the field of global urban studies.
Displacement has become one of the most prominent themes in contemporary geographical debates, used to describe processes of dispossession and forced eviction at a diverse range of scales. Given its ...frequent deployment in studies describing the consequences of gentrification, this paper seeks to better define and conceptualise displacement as a process of un-homing, noting that while gentrification can prompt processes of eviction, expulsion and exclusion operating at different scales and speeds, it always ruptures the connection between people and place. On this basis – and recognising displacement as a form of violence – this paper concludes that the diverse scales and temporalities of displacement need to be better elucidated so that their negative emotional, psychosocial and material impacts can be more fully documented, and resisted.
Urban geographers have recently been developing “conjunctural analysis.” This paper contributes to this emerging project in two ways. First, it argues that the existing literature has overlooked a ...critically important theoretical distinction—between normative and rationalist analysis. Second, we develop three meso-level concepts—plasticity, composites, temporalities—to provide concrete guidance on doing conjunctural analysis. We use the example of U.S. municipal finance to illustrate the intellectual returns of this schema, arguing that this example also demonstrates the approach’s wider applicability. Through pairing these concepts with prospective methodologies, we move the conjunctural analytic beyond its currently nascent state.
On alternative smart cities McFarlane, Colin; Söderström, Ola
City (London, England),
20/7/4/, Volume:
21, Issue:
3-4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Smart urbanism seems to be everywhere you turn. But in practice the agenda is an uncertain one, usually only partially developed, and often more about corporate-led urban development than about urban ...social justice. Rather than leave smart urbanism to the corporate and political elites, there are opportunities now for critical urban scholarship to not only critique how it is currently constituted, but to give shape to a globally oriented alternative smart urban agenda. An ambition like this means taking the 'urban' in 'smart urban' much more seriously. It means foregrounding the knowledges, political priorities and needs of those either actively excluded or included in damaging ways in mainstream smart urban discourses. We outline steps towards an alternative smart urbanism. We seek to move beyond the specific to the general and do so by drawing on radically different initiatives across the Global North and South. These initiatives provide tantalizing openings to a more socially just use of digital technology, where urban priorities and justice drive the use-or lack of use-of technology.
Scholars in urban political ecology, urban geography, and planning have suggested that urban greening interventions can create elite enclaves of environmental privilege and green gentrification, and ...exclude lower-income and minority residents from their benefits. Yet, much remains to be understood in regard to the magnitude, scope, and manifestations of green gentrification and the forms of contestation and resistance articulated against it. In this paper, we propose new questions, theoretical approaches, and research design approaches to examine the socio-spatial dynamics and ramifications of green gentrification and parse out why, how, where, and when green gentrification takes place.
Urban political ecology II Heynen, Nik
Progress in human geography,
12/2016, Volume:
40, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Attention to the urban and metropolitan growth of nature can no longer be denied. Nor can the intense scrutiny of racialized, postcolonial and indigenous perspectives on the press and pulse of uneven ...development across the planet’s urban political ecology be deferred any longer. There is sufficient research ranging across antiracist and postcolonial perspectives to constitute a need to discuss what is referred to here as ‘abolition ecology’. Abolition ecology represents an approach to studying urban natures more informed by antiracist, postcolonial and indigenous theory. The goal of abolition ecology is to elucidate and extrapolate the interconnected white supremacist and racialized processes that lead to uneven develop within urban environments.
PDF
