On urban studies in Brazil: The favela, uneven urbanisation and beyond

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802199336
Author(s):  
Mariana Fix ◽  
Pedro Fiori Arantes
Keyword(s):  
Inner City ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
Planning Models ◽  
Social Mobilisation ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Urban Warfare ◽  
Entire Planet

This essay discusses some key ideas and debates about urban studies in Brazil, considered historiographically, from the mid-1900s to the present. It presents the main components and particularities of what emerges as the Brazilian matrix of urban studies, interrogating the most influential work in the field with the country’s own experiences of industrialisation and urbanisation. It discusses some key urban debates of the 21st century, namely new planning models associated with globalisation, global mega-events, public–private partnerships, inner-city gentrification, housing and city financialisation, rising forms of urban warfare and social control in slums (favelas), and new activisms and urban insurgencies. Through this analysis, we point to contradictions and tensions in relation to European and North American urban theory, calling for the need to formulate new categories and hypotheses to better understand the unequal and extreme processes resulting from violent expansion of capitalist relations over the entire planet, and comment on the new practices and forms of social mobilisation emerging from turbulent contexts.

Theorizing Regulation-in-City for Homeless People’s Subaltern Strategy and Informality: Societalization, Metabolism, and Classes With(out) Housing

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110205
Author(s):  
Mahito Hayashi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Housing Consumption ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Critical Urban Theory

This paper aims to expand critical urban theory and spatialized political economy through developing a new, broad-based theoretical explanation of homelessness and the informal housing of the deprived in public spaces. After reviewing an important debate in geography, it systematicallyreasserts the relevance of class-related concepts in urban studies and, mobilizing post-determinist notions, it shows how a class-driven theory can inform the emergence of appropriating/differentiating/reconciliating agency from the material bedrock of urban metabolism and its society-integrating effect (societalization). The author weaves an urban diagnostic web of concepts by situating city-dwellers—classes with(out) housing—at the material level of metabolism and then in the sociopolitical dynamic of regulation, finding in the two realms urban class relations (enlisted within societalization) and agency formation (for reregulation, subaltern strategies, and potential rapprochement). The housing classes are retheorized as a composite category of hegemonic dwellers who enjoy housing consumption and whose metabolism thus appears as the normative consumption of public/private spaces. Homeless people are understood as a subaltern class who lacks housing consumption and whose metabolism can produce “housing” out of public spaces, in opposition to a hegemonic urban form practiced by the housing classes. These urban class relations breed homeless–housed divides and homeless regulation, and yet allow for agency’s creative appropriation/differentiation/reconciliation. This paper avoids crude dichotomy, but it argues that critical urban theory can productively use this way of theorization for examining post-determinist urban lifeworlds in relation to the relative fixity of urban form, metabolic circuits, and class relations.

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.

Urbanising climate justice: constructing scales and politicising difference

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kian Goh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Change Climate ◽  
Historical Difference

Abstract Central debates in urban studies often appear to neglect the most urgent issues confronting cities and regions. Discourses on generalised urban processes, historical difference and planetary urbanisation rarely take, as a primary object of analysis, intertwined global climate change and urban change. Climate change is often considered generalised, affecting everyone everywhere. But its impacts are unevenly distributed and experienced. It links generalised processes and particular impacts and actions with implications for urban theory. This article builds on theories of multiscalar research and the politics of location to develop a conceptual framework of urban change through the lens of climate justice.

scholarly journals Applying resilience thinking to ‘ordinary’ cities: A theoretical inquiry

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (40) ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Dessie
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Ecological Niche ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Considerable Potential ◽  
Enabling Environment ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Resilience Thinking ◽  
Theoretical Inquiry

AbstractThis paper assesses the prospective contribution of social-ecological resilience thinking in advancing a theory of ‘ordinary’ cities. Building on the hierarchical divide that continues to prescribe analyses and representations of cities in urban studies, the paper suggests that, while ideologically contentious, the conceptual configuration of resilience thinking, promoted essentially through notions of uncertainty, diversity and transformation, shows considerable potential for interdisciplinary research. While remaining cautious about its analytical thresholds, applying the framework as it emerges from its ecological niche suggests that resilience thinking can, alongside other concepts, play a part in creating an enabling environment for broadening the way communities, neighbourhoods and institutions that form and connect cities across the globe are understood, studied and represented in urban theory; allowing us to recognise all cities and their citizens as relatable and ‘ordinary’.

scholarly journals Doing comparative urbanism differently: Conjunctural cities and the stress-testing of urban theory

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802095749
Author(s):  
Özgür Sayın ◽  
Michael Hoyler ◽  
John Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
Significant Step ◽  
Distinctive Type ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Comparative Urbanism

Ongoing splintering and siloification in urban studies require alternative approaches to bring the major theoretical and epistemological perspectives into constructive dialogue. Reflecting growing calls for engaged pluralism, we analyse the extent to which different perspectives can come together as complementary alternatives in understanding cities and present a framework for overcoming the key theoretical and methodological challenges caused by fragmentation. Using Istanbul as our illustrative case, we do this in three steps. Theoretically, we stress-test the potentials and limits of four dominant perspectives in urban theory making – global cities, state rescaling, developmental and postcolonial – revealing how each can only ever generate a partial, one-dimensional, explanation. Methodologically, we proceed to make the case for doing comparative urbanism differently by developing a conjunctural approach. Finally, and conceptually, we identify ‘conjunctural cities’ as a distinctive type of city and as a new approach to analysing cities. Our contention is that approaching all cities conjuncturally provides a significant step towards putting engaged pluralism into action, as well as indicating new terrain on which the future of urban theory/urban studies can be constructively debated.

Disambiguating the southern urban critique: Propositions, pathways and possibilities for a more global urban studies

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Lawhon ◽  
Yaffa Truelove
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
The South ◽  
Critical Juncture ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
The Core ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Ontological Position

Scholarship engaging with (northern) urban theory from the south has troubled the core of urban studies. At this critical juncture, we argue that it is important to clarify core propositions and call attention to points of convergence and dissonance amongst advocates of ‘the southern urban critique’. We briefly review foundational arguments for this scholarly community, then outline three distinct iterations of the source of this critique: the south is empirically different; EuroAmerican hegemony works to displace a diversity of intellectual traditions; and the postcolonial encounter requires the critical interrogation of research practices. We then consider whether the southern urban critique is an argument for the study of a distinct southern urbanism, an ontological position about the socio-spatial contingency of all theorisation or a tactical strategy for calling attention to marginalised places and ideas to be superseded by an urban studies of a world of cities. We hope our efforts contribute to further conversation and greater analytical clarity, enabling more rigorous and robust articulations of the precise objects and objectives of the southern urban critique in particular, and urban studies more generally.

Rethinking Urbanism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garth Myers
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Cape Coast ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
New Era ◽  
Economic Relationships ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Many

This book asks two broad central questions: what has shaped contemporary urbanism and urbanization on the planet, and what are the shapes that urbanism and urbanization take? It tackles these questions in six content chapters. The first two chapters after the introduction address these central questions by analyzing discussions of processes and patterns of urbanism and urbanization. The other four chapters explore aspects of grand shaping forces: colonialism and imperialism; human migration and movement; trade and economic relationships; and policies and politics. It concentrates on Hartford, Zanzibar Port of Spain, San Juan, Cape Coast, Dakar, and three cities in China’s Pearl River Delta (Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou). These urban areas are used as starting places for conceptualizations built from postcolonial and southern thinking. The goal lies in providing practical, empirical illustrations and thick descriptions of the applicability of postcolonial and southern thought for addressing this new era, which the contemporary literature that sprang from the French urbanist Henri Lefebvre’s (1970: 113) hypothesis of ‘the planetary nature of the urban phenomenon’ terms the era of ‘planetary urbanization’. This book builds on the many recent works of postcolonial and southern urban studies contesting the universalizing and reductive tendencies of global North urban theory.

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