Current debates in urban theory: A critical assessment

Abstract

We dedicate this paper to our late friend and colleague Edward Soja in the full knowledge that he would have been unable to resist expressing alternative perspectives on almost everything we say. 2 AbstractUrban studies today is marked by many active debates. In an earlier paper, we addressed some of these debates by proposing a foundational concept of urbanization and urban form as a way of identifying a common language for urban research. In the present paper we provide a brief recapitulation of that framework. We then use this preliminary material as background to a critique of three currently influential versions of urban analysis, namely, postcolonial urban theory, assemblage theoretic approaches, and planetary urbanism. We evaluate each of these versions in turn and find them seriously wanting as statements about urban realities. We criticize (a) postcolonial urban theory for its particularism and its insistence on the provincialization of knowledge, (b) assemblage theoretic approaches for their indeterminacy and eclecticism, and (c) planetary urbanism for its radical devaluation of the forces of agglomeration and nodality in urban-economic geography.3 Urban Challenges and Urban Theory in the 21st CenturyThe current period of human history can plausibly be identified not only as a global but also as an urban era. This is a period in which population, productive activity, and wealth are highly and increasingly concentrated in cities. 1 Most cities offer a better standard of living for more people than ever before in human history; even the urban poor are better off, on average, than the rural poor around the world. Cities are primary centers of scientific, cultural and social innovation (Hall, 1998; Glaeser, 2012). Cities have also proliferated all over the globe and have become increasingly interdependent so that where once we could speak quite meaningfully of "national urban systems" (most extensively developed in the Global North) the current situation is one marked by an increasingly integrated world-wide network of cities together with an extraordinary surge of urban growth in the Global South (McKinsey, 2011). But this era is also in some ways a dark age as marked by gutted-out old industrial cities, concentrated poverty, slums, ethnic conflict, ecological challenges, unequal access to housing, gentrification, homelessness, social isolation, violence and crime, and many other problems. There has been a corresponding proliferation of academic and policy-related research on cities and a vigorous revival of debates about the content and theoretical orientation of urban studies.In this paper we discuss three currently influential perspectives on these debates, namely, postcolonial urban analysis, assemblage theoretic accounts of the city, and the theory of "planetary urbanism." In their different ways, each of these three bodies of work attempts to provide bold understandings of the empirical trends referred to above.At the same time, each of them seeks to present an account of the city that poses strong ...

Transatlantic city, part 1: Conjunctural urbanism

“…The field of critical urban studies has been moved in recent years by a series of poststructural and postcolonial interventions that have raised searching questions about the explanatory status accorded to 'EuroAmerican' cases, about the reach and relevance of political-economic theory claims concerning entrepreneurial-cum-neoliberal modes of regulation and about the respective utility of planetary, provincial and particularised formulations of the urban (see Brenner and Schmid, 2015;Leitner and Sheppard, 2016;Parnell and Robinson, 2012;Peck, 2015a;Roy, 2009;Storper and Scott, 2016). A significant methodological response to these debates has been a renewed emphasis on comparative urbanism (see McFarlane, 2014;Robinson, 2011Robinson, , 2015Ward, 2008), with an accent on the cosmopolitan proliferation of 'more global' approaches to urban studies, on less hierarchical (or 'top down') modes of explanation, on theorising from 'elsewhere and anywhere' and on the exploration of horizontal or 'lateral' differences, divergences and discrepancies between city-cases in the service of novel interpretations and alternative theory claims.…”

Zwischenstadt as a travelling concept: towards a critical discussion of mobile ideas in transnational planning discourses on urban sprawl

“…Furthermore, we see connections between our approach and contemporary efforts to provincialize urban theory (e.g. Lawhon, Ernstson, & Silver, 2014;Leitner & Sheppard, 2016;Robinson & Roy, 2016; but see Storper & Scott, 2016). However, these links would need to be explored further in future research.…”

Die Emergenz der Masse – zur Urbanität im globalen Süden

“…von Storper und Scott bestritten wird. Storper und Scott erkennen anstelle sozioökonomischer Ana-lyse lediglich "deleuzeguattarian jargon" (Storper andScott, 2016:1127), der zur poststrukturalistisch ausufernden Beschreibung urbaner Informalität verwendet würde (Storper and Scott, 2016). Seth Schindler stellt in diesem Zusammenhang die These auf, dass wesentliche Aspekte der Urbanität in Städten des Südens in den Arbeiten der Urbanist/innen nicht thematisiert würden.…”