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Comparative Urbanism

Tactics for Global Urban Studies
IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series 1. Aufl.

von: Jennifer Robinson
20,99 €
Verlag:	Wiley
Format:	EPUB
Veröffentl.:	01.07.2022
ISBN/EAN:	9781119697565
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	464

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Titelbeschreibung

COMPARATIVE URBANISM ‘Comparative Urbanism fully transforms the scope and purpose of urban studies today, distilling innovative conceptual and methodological tools. The theoretical and empirical scope is astounding, enlightening, emboldening. Robinson peels away conceptual labels that have anointed some cities as paradigmatic and left others as mere copies. She recalibrates overly used theoretical perspectives, resurrects forgotten ones long in need of a dusting off, and brings to the fore those often marginalised. Robinson’s approach radically re-distributes who speaks for the urban, and which urban conditions shape our theoretical understandings. With Comparative Urbanism in our hands, we can start the practice of urban studies anywhere and be relevant to any number of elsewheres.’ Jane M. Jacobs, Professor of Urban Studies, Yale-NUS College, Singapore ‘How to think the multiplicity of urban realities at the same time, across different times and rhythmic arrangements; how to move with the emergences and stand-stills, with conceptualisations that do justice to all things gathered under the name of the urban. How to imagine comparatively amongst differences that remain different, individualised outcomes, but yet exist in-common. No book has so carefully conducted a specifically urban philosophy on these matters, capable of beginning and ending anywhere.’ AbdouMaliq Simone, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield The rapid pace and changing nature of twenty-first century urbanisation as well as the diversity of global urban experiences calls for new theories and new methodologies in urban studies. In Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies, Jennifer Robinson proposes grounds for reformatting comparative urban practice and offers a wide range of tactics for researching global urban experiences. The focus is on inventing new concepts as well as revising existing approaches. Inspired by postcolonial and decolonial critiques of urban studies she advocates for an experimental comparative urbanism, open to learning from different urban experiences and to expanding conversations amongst urban scholars across the globe. The book features a wealth of examples of comparative urban research, concerned with many dimensions of urban life. A range of theoretical and philosophical approaches ground an understanding of the radical revisability and emergent nature of concepts of the urban. Advanced students, urbanists and scholars will be prompted to compose comparisons which trace the interconnected and relational character of the urban, and to think with the variety of urban experiences and urbanisation processes across the globe, to produce the new insights the twenty-first century urban world demands.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Series Editors’ Preface Preface ix Introduction 1 Part I Reformatting Comparison 23 1 Ways of Knowing the Global Urban 25 Uncertain Territories, ‘Strategic Essentialisms’: Regions, the Global South and beyond 27 The Disappearing City: Planetary Urbanisation and its Critics 35 Decolonial, Developmental, Emergent: Different Starting Points, or Incomparability? 41 Dimensions of a Comparative Urban Imagination 47 Conclusion 50 2 The Limits of Comparative Methodologies in Urban Studies 53 Some Analytical Limits to the ‘World’ of Cities: Beyond Incommensurability 54 Conventional Strategies for Comparison in Urban Studies 57 The Potential of Comparative Research 69 Conclusion 76 3 Comparative Urbanism in the Archives: Thinking with Variety, Thinking with Connections 79 Expanding the Comparative Gesture 80 Thinking with Variety 83 Stretching Comparisons: Thinking with Connections 91 Conclusion 104 4 Thinking Cities through Elsewhere: Reformatting Comparison 107 Thinking with Concrete Totalities 108 Singularities, Repeated Instances, Concepts 119 Genetic and Generative Grounds for Urban Comparisons 125 Conclusion: From Grounds to Tactics 128 Part II Genetic Comparisons 135 5 Connections 137 Connections as Urbanisation Processes 138 Connections Producing Repeated Instances 146 Every Case Matters 154 Conclusion 159 6 Relations 161 Wider Processes 164 Urban Neoliberalisation, Comparatively 171 Connected Contexts 186 More Spatialities of the Urban: Topologies, Partial Connections, Submarine Relations 191 Conclusion 195 Part III Generative Comparisons 199 7 Generating Concepts 201 The Conceptualising Subject: Institutions, Horizons, Grounds 204 A Life of Concepts: Ideal Types 217 Thinking the ‘Concrete’ 230 Negotiated Universals: Concepts ‘In-common’ 235 Conclusion 243 8 Composing Comparisons 247 Working with ‘Conjuncture’ 249 Conceptualising from Specificity 263 Thinking across Diversity 271 Conclusion 276 9 Conversations 279 Shifting Grounds: Comparison as Practice 280 Comparison as Conversations 284 Theoretical Reflections 292 Mobile Concepts, or ‘Arriving at’ Concepts 295 Conclusion 301 Part IV Thinking from the Urban as Distinctive 305 10 Territories 307 Thinking from Territories 308 Which Territorialisations? 312 Assembling Territories 320 Conclusion 325 11 Into the Territory, or, the Urban as Idea 329 Detachment 331 Suturing 336 Standstill 340 Ideas 346 Informality, as Idea 357 Conclusion 362 Conclusion: Starting Anywhere, Thinking with (Elsew)here 369 A Reformatted Urban Comparison 370 Conceptualisation 376 An Explosion of Urban Studies 383 References 387 Index 441

Rezension

‘Comparative Urbanism fully transforms the scope and purpose of urban studies today, distilling innovative conceptual and methodological tools. The theoretical and empirical scope is astounding, enlightening, emboldening. Robinson peels away conceptual labels that have anointed some cities as paradigmatic and left others as mere copies. She recalibrates overly used theoretical perspectives, resurrects forgotten ones long in need of a dusting off, and brings to the fore those often marginalised. Robinson’s approach radically re-distributes who speaks for the urban, and which urban conditions shape our theoretical understandings. With Comparative Urbanism in our hands, we can start the practice of urban studies anywhere and be relevant to any number of elsewheres.’ Jane M. Jacobs, Professor of Urban Studies, Yale-NUS College, Singapore ‘How to think the multiplicity of urban realities at the same time, across different times and rhythmic arrangements; how to move with the emergences and stand-stills, with conceptualisations that do justice to all things gathered under the name of the urban. How to imagine comparatively amongst differences that remain different, individualised outcomes, but yet exist in-common. No book has so carefully conducted a specifically urban philosophy on these matters, capable of beginning and ending anywhere.’ AbdouMaliq Simone, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield ‘Jenny Robinson’s strong belief in the need to experiment with comparative methods, theories and concepts in urban studies for ‘a globally diverse urban’ has long inspired many of us. In this book, she takes this plea forward in a comprehensive journey through philosophy, anthropology and geography. Her wonderful voice in this book takes the reader by the hand through a landscape of ideas and a heartfully felt passion for comparative urbanism. Written by one of the most original geographers of our times, it provides resources to make interdisciplinary scholarship work by drawing on many theoretical angles from various corners of the field of social sciences and humanities. It is a must-read for all of us interested in that ‘impossible’ object of our studies, the urban, whether we are starting to explore this field of study or share the dearly felt need to re-imagine our central concepts in this rapidly changing world.’ Talja Blokland, Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt-University of Berlin

Autorenportrait

Jennifer Robinson is Professor of Human Geography, University College London, UK. She is the author of Ordinary Cities, a seminal work which developed a postcolonial critique of urban studies. Her empirical research in South Africa examined the history of apartheid cities and the politics of post-apartheid city-visioning, while her comparative research has considered urban development politics in London, Shanghai and Johannesburg, and transnational circuits shaping African urbanisation.

Back cover copy

‘Comparative Urbanism fully transforms the scope and purpose of urban studies today, distilling innovative conceptual and methodological tools. The theoretical and empirical scope is astounding, enlightening, emboldening. Robinson peels away conceptual labels that have anointed some cities as paradigmatic and left others as mere copies. She recalibrates overly used theoretical perspectives, resurrects forgotten ones long in need of a dusting off, and brings to the fore those often marginalised. Robinson’s approach radically re-distributes who speaks for the urban, and which urban conditions shape our theoretical understandings. With Comparative Urbanism in our hands, we can start the practice of urban studies anywhere and be relevant to any number of elsewheres.’ Jane M. Jacobs, Professor of Urban Studies, Yale-NUS College, Singapore ‘How to think the multiplicity of urban realities at the same time, across different times and rhythmic arrangements; how to move with the emergences and stand-stills, with conceptualisations that do justice to all things gathered under the name of the urban. How to imagine comparatively amongst differences that remain different, individualised outcomes, but yet exist in-common. No book has so carefully conducted a specifically urban philosophy on these matters, capable of beginning and ending anywhere.’ AbdouMaliq Simone, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield The rapid pace and changing nature of twenty-first century urbanisation as well as the diversity of global urban experiences calls for new theories and new methodologies in urban studies. In Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies, Jennifer Robinson proposes grounds for reformatting comparative urban practice and offers a wide range of tactics for researching global urban experiences. The focus is on inventing new concepts as well as revising existing approaches. Inspired by postcolonial and decolonial critiques of urban studies she advocates for an experimental comparative urbanism, open to learning from different urban experiences and to expanding conversations amongst urban scholars across the globe. The book features a wealth of examples of comparative urban research, concerned with many dimensions of urban life. A range of theoretical and philosophical approaches ground an understanding of the radical revisability and emergent nature of concepts of the urban. Advanced students, urbanists and scholars will be prompted to compose comparisons which trace the interconnected and relational character of the urban, and to think with the variety of urban experiences and urbanisation processes across the globe, to produce the new insights the twenty-first century urban world demands.