Blurring boundaries: Fragments of an urban research agenda

The State of Urban Agendas in Norwegian Development Research and Policy

“…These differences are played out and reinforced through the ascription and deployment of the notions of 'modernity' and 'developmentalism'; the former relevant to the West and the latter, the Other. (Pieterse, 2006, p. 402, referring to Robinson's 2002 This rural bias is acknowledged in the recent White Paper on the UN, in which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states its goal of promoting urban issues more strongly in the international arena (Utenriksdepartementet, 2012c, p. 18). The question is to what extent this agenda is able to move away from the underlying developmental and interventionist agenda and to break away from the dominant representations of African urbanism.…”

Rethinking urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday: Perspectives from and of the global South

“…However, increasingly academics are arguing that such heterogeneity represents not failure but spaces of possibility and transition (Guma, 2020). By focusing on the everyday and examining the “networked entanglements” (Pieterse, 2006) that shape the regulation of urban infrastructures and environments we can begin to expose the wide array of practices, materials, and politics of regulation that profoundly shape urban life. The contributions to this special issue seek to reveal the contested, negotiated, and situated nature of everyday governance and the multiple ways that politics become spatialized and power shapes contemporary cities, urban environments, and infrastructures.…”