Policy mobilities as comparison: urbanization processes, repeated instances, topologies

Abstract

Following on from calls to reformat comparative urban methods to support global urban studies, this paper draws inspiration from policy mobilities to explore how the genetic interconnectedness of urban processes and outcomes can be mobilised methodologically to critique and extend concepts in urban theory through comparison. What might be the scope and tactics for a practice of comparison through connections, which can start anywhere and build comparisons and analytical insights across a very great diversity of urban experiences? This paper explores three possible ways to take this forward. Firstly, tracing a specific connection, such as a policy link, from one context to another or across a number of different contexts contributes to understanding specific urbanization processes. Secondly, following connections brings into view the range and variety of processes and outcomes in different contexts. In the highly transnationalised world of urban policy this method potentially links a very wide variety of diverse urban contexts and draws attention to a multiplicity of repeated instances of urban forms. Finally, the paper considers the potential to work with the array of transnational processes shaping distinctive policy outcomes and development paths as they come together in one specific place-to explore how "elsewhere" is folded in to localised growth paths. Thus, comparative practices could follow policy mobilities to explore the potential of a more topological imagination of thinking across different contexts, and bringing a diversity of urban contexts into analytical conversation. Along these lines, the invention of concepts and understandings of the urban might emerge anywhere, and perhaps find wider relevance across different situations. Following the trajectories of policy mobilities is thus not only a pathway to inventing new methods but also potentially new grounds for theorizing the urban.

Disassembling connections: A comparative analysis of the politics of slum upgrading in eThekwini and São Paulo

“…The comparative tactic proposed in this paper, therefore, takes seriously the recommendations to build experimental comparisons from such myriad connections (Robinson, 2011(Robinson, , 2018So¨derstro¨m, 2014 ;Ward, 2010). It makes use of a policy link between the City Hall of Sa˜o Paulo and the eThekwini Municipality, through the UCLG's Mentoring Programme, the Mentoring on Upgrading Informal Settlements, to build a comparison of the trajectories of slum upgrading policy in the two cities.…”

“…The analysis builds on the vast urban policy mobilities literature (brilliantly compiled in Theodore [2019]) but both draws on and moves beyond the circulation itself to develop an explicit comparative method which brings the different contexts into mutual reflection (Robinson, 2018). In that sense, two territorialised instances of policy formation, wherein local actors are immersed in distinctive power relations and planning cultures (Robinson, 2013), are drawn into comparison.…”

“…Rather, the policy connection is itself mobilised as a methodological tool to think comparatively about slum upgrading practices in Sa˜o Paulo and eThekwini. Alongside their wider shared experiences of policy circulations, the long histories of slum upgrading policy in each context, assembled into a specific policy connection, have produced convergences and generated difference (Jacobs, 2006(Jacobs, , 2012Robinson, 2016Robinson, , 2018. The approach proposed here treats the policy connection as a complex, assembled spatiality, which is then disassembled in analysis to generate comparative insights.…”

A posteriori comparisons, repeated instances and urban policy mobilities: What ‘best practices’ leave behind

“…In other words, the instance rather than the city becomes the case. As Robinson (2018: 228) has argued: ‘orienting ourselves to the “repeated instance” as the form of the case — thus the case as a singularity, which initially stands only for itself, rather than as a representative of a wider universal process or pre-given category’. The repeated instance can thus be a particular building design (Jacobs, 2006) or a particular way in which an urban policy is mobilised (Peck and Theodore, 2015).…”

Practising comparative urbanism: Methods and consequences

“…In the second tactic, tracing people, processes, and models, Robinson (2018) argues that a comparison can be developed that disturbs the idea that urban ideas originate in certain, dominant cities. For example, Wood's (2016) analysis of bus rapid transit (BRT) demonstrates the movement of the idea from South America to South Africa.…”