Reflections on five years of the Summer Institute in Urban Studies

Abstract

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.

What, where and who is urban studies? On research centres in an unequal world

“…Alex Schafran (Schafran, 2014: 326) has provocatively argued that the embeddedness of ‘critical urban studies’ within the social sciences is part of the problem, as it remains stuck in 20th-century social science approaches to theory and methods, in which ‘architecture and engineering increasingly have their own conversations, both critical and as handmaidens for the global growth machine’. In their reflections on organizing the Summer Institute in Urban Studies, Ward and Bunnell (2021) reach similar conclusions, showing that the institute's conception of urban studies is derived from academic practices in the social sciences that operate at some distance from the clearly also ‘urban’ work of architects, designers and planners. More fundamentally, Brendan Gleeson (2013) points to the marginalization of social scientific approaches to the study of cities and urbanization, because of the increasing visibility and influence of a popular ‘urban age’ discourse and ‘neo-positivist’ physical sciences that lack a substantive social analysis.…”