Current debates in urban theory from a scale perspective: Introducing a scenes approach

Urban Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (8) ◽  
pp. 1487-1497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Wu ◽  
Rima Wilkes ◽  
Daniel Silver ◽  
Terry Nichols Clark
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Urban Scenes ◽  
The World ◽  
Geographical Scale ◽  
The City ◽  
Review Current ◽  
Hierarchical Scale

Cities, all over the world, have become more diverse than ever. This poses great challenges to urban studies and theorising. In this article, we review current debates in urban theory through Howitt’s (1998) three-facet conceptualisation of geographical scale and find that urban theorists have high levels of disagreement on the areal (scale as size), the hierarchical (scale as level) as well as the dialectical (scale as relation) aspects of the city. We show that, if urban theorists are to find a common approach to the city, we should contemplate: 1) what cities to study; 2) from which geographical level(s); and 3) how the city relates to other entities. We illustrate how the theory of urban scenes could potentially be used to address these debates in urban theory.

Urban theory with an outside

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tariq Jazeel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Spatial Process ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
City Formation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Value ◽  
The City ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This paper critically engages planetary urbanization’s claim that it generates ‘Urban Theory Without an Outside’. It argues planetary urbanization is part of the broader ideological terrain of urban studies whose textual field reifies the city, the urban and urbanization as objects and processes of analyses through a kind of ‘methodological urbanization’. The paper argues the conceptual and political value of delineating views from outside urban studies and planetary urbanization – in particular from domains like area studies – that unmoor the primacy of the city, the urban and particularly urbanization in understandings of socio-spatial processes across planetary space. It suggests how these perspectives can usefully act as ‘supplements’ indifferent to urban studies, reminding urban studies of the limits of its own forms of knowledge production in relation to socio-spatial process and city formation. To do this, the paper sketches an anti-colonial history of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Openings: The Urban Question as a Scale Question?

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-45
Author(s):  
Neil Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Urban Restructuring ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Spatial Restructuring ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
The City ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Geopolitical Context

For over a century, the urban question has generated intense debate on matters of conceptualization, method, and interpretation. Since the 1990s, in the context of debates on post-Fordism, globalization, and urban restructuring, the urban question has been redefined as a question of scale. Why has this scalar redefinition of the urban occurred, and what does this mean for urban theory and research? What are its analytical possibilities and dangers? In what ways does such an approach reframe the long-standing emphasis on the “city” as the core focal point for urban studies? This opening chapter elaborates these questions in intellectual and geopolitical context, thus setting the stage for the explorations of urbanization, state spatial restructuring, and rescaling processes that follow in the rest of the book. This chapter also situates the book’s argument in relation to contemporary debates on abstraction, generalization, comparison, and contextual particularity in critical urban theory.

scholarly journals Assemblage Thinking in Urban Studies: How to Conceive of a City?

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
Pavel Holubec
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
Human Society ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Object Based ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Assemblage thinking is process-based thinking. Understanding cities from this perspective therefore implies searching for processes that are assembling the city and that keeps it alive. Because of this approach, we don't need to ask: „what the city is?“ but either: „how did cities emerge?“ or: „how is their existence maintained?“ The paper argues that the perspective, from which we see cities, matters, because it either highlights or hides something. We will argue, that the result of an object-based thinking about cities, that stems from modern order of the world, is a very finite and constricted notion of a city, that in effect precludes any alternatives. But by overcoming the obsolete notions of objects, objectivity and subjects by notions of assemblage, perspectivity and chaining, the new world order may eventually emerge and resolve also the mounting enviromental and social problems. We understand city as a specific kind of creature that, through imposition of limits, has helped the human society to differentiate and become global. But now is the time to limit the city, acknowledge planetary boundaries and this way force the global society to develop itself so it can adapt to the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Review Article: North Urban Political Economy, Urban Theory and British Research

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN HARDING
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
City Government ◽  
Growth Machine ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Urban Regime ◽  
Urban Political Economy ◽  
Urban Regimes ◽  
The Us ◽  
The City

In 1976, when European debates within urban theory were dominated by neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian approaches to cities as sites for the provision of social and welfare services, the very different notion of ‘the city as growth machine’ slipped into the US urban studies lexicon with the publication of Harvey Molotch's article of the same name. In 1983, the year in which Castells brought the radical phase of European urban studies to a halt with a famous warning against ‘the useless construction of abstract grand theory’, the concept of an urban regime had a similarly unobtrusive birth when the phrase was used by Fainstein and Fainstein to describe ‘the circle of powerful elected officials and top administrators’ in US city government. Had the story ended there it is unlikely that the world – especially outside North America – would have heard much more of urban regimes and growth machines. As it has turned out, though, from the late 1980s onwards urban scholars have hardly seemed able to hear enough about these two approaches within US urban political economy.

scholarly journals Sciences of human settlements: Searching for the theory and practice

2002 ◽  
Vol 69 (415-417) ◽  
pp. 279-284
Author(s):  
Wu Liangyong
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Human Settlements ◽  
Tsinghua University ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Chinese Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The World ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The City

The author is Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People's Republic of China; member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; and Director of both the Institute of Architectural and Urban Studies and the Center for Human Settlements, Tsinghua University. He is also a member and former President of the World Society for Ekistics (WSE). The text that follows is a slightly edited and revised version of a paper presented at the WSE Symposion "Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century," Berlin, 24-28 October, 2001.

scholarly journals Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics, and politics in cities of the global south

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa PR Caldeira
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Global South ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Many cities around the world have been largely constructed by their residents, who build not only their own houses, but also frequently their neighborhoods. In this article, I use the notion of peripheral urbanization to analyze this way of producing cities that is quite pervasive in the global south. I argue that peripheral urbanization refers to modes of the production of space that (a) operate with a specific temporality and agency, (b) engage transversally with official logics, (c) generate new modes of politics, and (d) create highly unequal and heterogeneous cities. I also argue that peripheral urbanization not only produces heterogeneity within the city as it unfolds over time, but also varies considerably from one city to another. I build my arguments by juxtaposing dissimilar cases from a few cities in the global south. To focus on peripheral urbanization means simultaneously to de-center urban theory and to offer a bold characterization of modes of the production of space that are different from those that generated the cities of the North Atlantic.

Lyon – UNESCO’s Creative City of Gastronomy?

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Avelino Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Brand Positioning ◽  
City Branding ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Creative Cities ◽  
Marketing Program ◽  
Creative City ◽  
Territorial Marketing ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

The fast urbanization in many regions of the world has generated a high competition between cities. In the race for investments and for international presence, some cities have increasingly resorting to the territorial marketing techniques like city branding. One of the strategies of recent years has been to use of creativity and / or labeling of creative city for the promotion of its destination. This phenomenon raises a question whether the city branding programs have worked in accordance with the cultural industries of the territory or if such labels influence the thought of tourists and locals. This paper begins by placing a consideration of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) and the strategies of the Territorial Marketing Program of the city of Lyon in France, Only Lyon. It also raises the question the perception of the target public to each of the current actions through semi-structured interviews which were applied between May and August 2015. Finally, I will try to open a discussion the brand positioning adopted by the city of Lyon

Book Review

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-389
Author(s):  
Eduardo Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
City Image ◽  
European Capital Of Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
The Olympic Games

Evinç Doğan (2016). Image of Istanbul, Impact of ECoC 2010 on The City Image. London: Transnational Press London. [222 pp, RRP: £18.75, ISBN: 978-1-910781-22-7]The idea of discovering or creating a form of uniqueness to differentiate a place from others is clearly attractive. In this regard, and in line with Ashworth (2009), three urban planning instruments are widely used throughout the world as a means of boosting a city’s image: (i) personality association - where places associate themselves with a named individual from history, literature, the arts, politics, entertainment, sport or even mythology; (ii) the visual qualities of buildings and urban design, which include flagship building, signature urban design and even signature districts and (iii) event hallmarking - where places organize events, usually cultural (e.g., European Capital of Culture, henceforth referred to as ECoC) or sporting (e.g., the Olympic Games), in order to obtain worldwide recognition. 

‘Otherwise in London’ or, the ‘Essence of Things’: Modernity and Estrangement in the Nineteenth-Century Cityscape

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Julian Wolfreys
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Thomas De Quincey ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Representation ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Writers of the early nineteenth century sought to find new ways of writing about the urban landscape when first confronted with the phenomena of London. The very nature of London's rapid growth, its unprecedented scale, and its mere difference from any other urban centre throughout the world marked it out as demanding a different register in prose and poetry. The condition of writing the city, of inventing a new writing for a new experience is explored by familiar texts of urban representation such as by Thomas De Quincey and William Wordsworth, as well as through less widely read authors such as Sarah Green, Pierce Egan, and Robert Southey, particularly his fictional Letters from England.

Bringing the Real World of Science to Children: A Partnership of the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G Picciano ◽  
Robert V. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Every child has a right to an education. In the United States, the issue is not necessarily about access to a school but access to a quality education. With strict compulsory education laws, more than 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and billions of dollars spent annually on public and private education, American children surely have access to buildings and classrooms. However, because of a complex and competitive system of shared policymaking among national, state, and local governments, not all schools are created equal nor are equal education opportunities available for the poor, minorities, and underprivileged. One manifestation of this inequity is the lack of qualified teachers in many urban and rural schools to teach certain subjects such as science, mathematics, and technology. The purpose of this article is to describe a partnership model between two major institutions (The American Museum of Natural History and The City University of New York) and the program designed to improve the way teachers are trained and children are taught and introduced to the world of science. These two institutions have partnered on various projects over the years to expand educational opportunity especially in the teaching of science. One of the more successful projects is Seminars on Science (SoS), an online teacher education and professional development program, that connects teachers across the United States and around the world to cutting-edge research and provides them with powerful classroom resources. This article provides the institutional perspectives, the challenges and the strategies that fostered this partnership.

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