Can the straw man speak? An engagement with postcolonial critiques of ‘global cities research’

Meeteren, Michiel van; Derudder, Ben; Bassens, David

doi:10.1177/2043820616675984

Cited by 64 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 160 publications

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“…Previously neglected areas, such as African urbanism (Grant, 2015;Parnell and Pieterse, 2014;Myers, 2011;Pieterse, 2008;Obeng-Odoom, 2010), are receiving attention and innovative comparisons -such as planetary gentrification (Lees, Shin and López-Morales 2016) -have gained centrality. Nevertheless, thorny controversies have beset this expansion, which potentially overstretches concepts (see van Meeteren et al, 2016a). Critics of the latest research suggest that researchers may in fact have disavowed the globalization paradigm and substituted comparative empiricism for theory.…”

Section: Demarcating the Debate: Broadening The Globalization Paradigmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cities on and off the map: A bibliometric assessment of urban globalisation research

2017

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Growing out of writings on Global (North) cities, urban globalisation research (UGR) has expanded its canon to engage with an increasing diversity of cities and locations. Yet, this broadening has been uneven and controversial in its theoretical horizons and empirical universe. Focusing on the latter, this paper combines bibliometric, demographic, economic and georeferenced data to assess how UGR maps onto internationally documented cities (n: 1692). Our study analyses city-themed publications by city location, demographic size and home-country income (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014). Drawing on social science publications indexed in English (Scopus database), our results provide grounds for cautious optimism: recent publications offer broader, though still uneven coverage. The moving spatial average of publication counts also implies that the topical centre of published research gravity is shifting away from Euro-America. Yet, UGR lags in its coverage of the urban geographical universe, failing to keep pace with the economic/demographic trends that are resulting in southward/eastward shifts in worldwide urbanisation. Furthermore, while smaller cities and those in lower-income countries are still sidelined, cities in upper-middle income countries exhibit the largest gaps between observed and expected publication values. In our conclusion, we contend that urban bibliometrics could be further mobilised to identify publication foci and lacunae. Applied to cities on and off the map and a broader universe of urban knowledges, bibliometrics could help move contentious debates forward, identifying newer paradigms that may be engaging the world of cities beyond the globalisation umbrella and charting out multiple and complex topical relations across variegated worlds of urbanism.

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Section: Demarcating the Debate: Broadening The Globalization Paradigmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cities on and off the map: A bibliometric assessment of urban globalisation research

2017

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“…Developing urban theories that understand the heterogeneity of cities (Robinson ; Peck ) in relation to the wider political economy is therefore a central challenge for contemporary urban scholarship (Peck , ; Silver ; Storper ; van Meeteren et al. ). This challenge has increasingly been met by scholarship using concepts such as actor networks (Castells ; Smith and Doel ), relationality (Ward , ), and assemblages (Hall and Savage ; McFarlane ) to explore the ways in which cities are discrete places bound up in numerous forms of connection.…”

Section: City Size and Post‐recession Urban Restructuringmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Big to Small Cities: A Qualitative Analysis of the Causes and Outcomes of Post–Recession Municipal Bankruptcies

Davidson

2020

City & Community

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Two cities loom large in the history of American urban restructuring. New York City's 1975 technical bankruptcy and Detroit's 2013 Chapter 9 bankruptcy have played an oversized role in urban theory. This is currently reflected in competing theories of post‐recession urban restructuring. “Austerity urbanism” uses Detroit as an exemplar, whereas “pragmatic municipalism” adopts the converse position arguing post‐recession reform is defined by local context. This paper draws on the small cities literature to generate a different account of recent municipal bankruptcies and their broader impacts. It uses qualitative methods to survey the causes and outcomes of all eight post‐recession Chapter 9 bankruptcies. The research recognizes the potential nationwide significance of these extreme events but avoids focusing on big city examples. The paper's findings suggest small and medium sized cities play a significant role in shaping recession‐related restructuring.

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“…Nevertheless, a tendency toward generalised critique, mischaracterisation, and silencing of other perspectives has at times polarised debate in unhelpful ways (van Meeteren et al, 2016a). Following Barnes and Sheppard's (2010) call for 'engaged pluralism' in economic geography, arguments for a more open and constructive dialogue in debates over urban theory making are currently in vogue (van Meeteren et al, 2016a(van Meeteren et al, , 2016bRobinson, 2016b;Brenner, 2017).…”

Section: Le11 3tu Ukmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following Barnes and Sheppard's (2010) call for 'engaged pluralism' in economic geography, arguments for a more open and constructive dialogue in debates over urban theory making are currently in vogue (van Meeteren et al, 2016a(van Meeteren et al, , 2016bRobinson, 2016b;Brenner, 2017).…”

Section: Le11 3tu Ukmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global cities research and urban theory making

Hoyler

Harrison

2017

Environ Plan A

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Global cities research has long been an integral and often a dominant aspect of urban theory making. Nowhere is this history more visible than in the recent anniversaries marking pioneering publications in this research tradition, including the centenary of Patrick Geddes' (1915) Cities in Evolution, golden anniversary of Peter Hall's (1966) The World Cities and silver anniversary of Saskia Sassen's (1991) The Global City. Each book became the antecedent to successive generations of world/global cities research and urban theory making, centred on examining cities as nodes in regional (Geddes), national (Hall) and global (Sassen) urban systems. Yet as we have passed these landmark anniversaries, world/global cities research is facing powerful challenges -conceptually, empirically, ideologically and methodologically -in ways arguably not seen before.Most significant has been the strong postcolonial critique, which has taken to presenting world and global cities research as being fundamentally flawed. Arguing that world and global cities research suffers from intellectual parochialism -the result, it is suggested, of presenting universal claims to urban theory through the lens of cities in the global Norththe postcolonial critique represents an intellectual call to arms to internationalise urban theory through more comparative modes of urban theory making (Robinson, 2016a; Roy and Ong, 2011; Schindler, 2017).Aligned to this are calls for new methodological approaches to urban research. Arguing from a number of different theoretical vantage points, including actor-network theory and assemblage theory (Farı´as and Bender, 2010;McFarlane, 2011), these approaches seek to emphasise the particularity, variety and diversity of urban places vis-a`-vis what they see as the a priori theorisation of knowledge about cities from the perspective of a limited number of world/global cities in the global North. Moreover, their aspiration for truly international urban studies 'conducted ''on a world scale''' (Robinson, 2011: 2, citing Connell, 2007 places a premium on 'comparative methodologies' for undertaking 'comparative urbanism' (Robinson, 2014).The problem currently is the perception that this necessitates the rejection of urban theories derived through global cities research and the development of alternative forms of theorisation. In part we see this in the attempt to replace the privileged narrative of global/world cities with a counter-narrative of 'ordinary cities' (Robinson, 2006). We have also seen it to the fore in the writings of, most notably, Ananya Roy (2009) when arguing for 'new geographies of theory' and 'new conceptual vectors' in order to understand the 21st century metropolis (see also Ernstson et al.

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Can the straw man speak? An engagement with postcolonial critiques of ‘global cities research’

Cited by 64 publications

References 160 publications

Cities on and off the map: A bibliometric assessment of urban globalisation research

Cities on and off the map: A bibliometric assessment of urban globalisation research

From Big to Small Cities: A Qualitative Analysis of the Causes and Outcomes of Post–Recession Municipal Bankruptcies

Global cities research and urban theory making

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