Tracing as comparative method

Wood, Astrid

doi:10.1177/00420980221086124

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…I am delighted that three (relatively) early career scholars whose own work on comparative urbanism has closely inspired my own (Brill, 2022; Ren, 2020; Wood, 2020) accepted our invitation to comment on the Special Issue. They offer a guide to some key themes that emerge from the articles and suggest some ways in which readers might approach the Special Issue as a whole – Frances Brill, whose own work has explored urban developers in Johannesburg and London, draws on the articles to probe what doing ‘experimental’ comparisons entails (Brill, 2018, 2022); Astrid Wood considers how tracing key elements of urbanisation processes opens to comparative analysis, grounded in her own research on bus rapid transit policy mobilities (Wood, 2020, 2022); and Julie Ren develops themes shaped by her own creative contribution to urban comparative method which proposes building comparative analyses on the basis of ‘theoretical cases’ across connected urban contexts (Ren, 2020, 2022). Reading these commentaries in advance of the articles will also offer a guide to their contents and the debates they engage with.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Generating concepts of ‘the urban’ through comparative practice

Robinson

2022

Urban Studies

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This Introduction to the special issue, ‘ Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies’, outlines the basis for a reformatted comparative method inspired by the complex spatialities of the urban world. The articles in the volume each bring forward innovative approaches to comparative methods which support wider conceptualisations of urban processes and urban experiences. The articles in this volume consider a wide range of urban contexts and collectively move beyond geopolitically imprecise propositions of ‘southern’ urbanism to embrace the wider comparative agenda of thinking with both the diversity and the profound interconnectedness of the urban globally. The articles contribute to decentring urban studies, opening conceptualisation to a range of different contexts and differently positioned writers. They also speak to the analytical and methodological challenges posed by current trends in global urbanisation, as dispersed, fragmented and extending over vast territories. Thinking with the multiple elsewheres of any urban context invites a comparative imagination – this introduction draws together the creative ways in which authors in this volume have responded to this potential. Processes of conceptualisation both emerge from and more acutely reveal the spatiality and nature of the global urban: comparative method, then, also proposes a certain mode of theorisation of the urban.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Generating concepts of ‘the urban’ through comparative practice

Robinson

2022

Urban Studies

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“…While early socio-scientific approaches in urban research focused mainly on the differences between metropolises and rural regions or small towns-typical of this is Simmel's (1903Simmel's ( /1997) classic essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life"-in recent decades interest has increasingly turned not only to intertwined urban and rural developments but also to the differences between metropolises and the question of how the particularities of cities are formed and reproduced (Diener et al, 2015;Löw, 2012;Soja & Kanai, 2007). In connection with this, the question of comparing cities has acquired new priority and relevance (Robinson, 2010(Robinson, , 2015Wood, 2022). The concept of the "specificity of cities" encourages us to study the characteristic features of a city comprehensively.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Rises and Urban Specificity: Politics of Vertical Construction in Paris, London, and Vienna

Glauser

2022

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High-rise buildings have been experiencing a significant boom worldwide over the past two decades. This is true not least for European cities, where church steeples, town hall towers, and chimneys were the main vertical accents in city centers for a long time. This article focuses on the construction of high-rise buildings as a “glocal” phenomenon. The vertical building type has spread around the world, but approaches to it are site-specific and inextricably entangled with local problems, modes of action, and discourses. Construction strategies and discussions about tall buildings are quite diverse even in Europe alone. Presenting case studies of Paris, London, and Vienna, this article looks at three metropolises in which vertical building has caused particular unrest in recent years and reveals enlightening contrasts between them. In exploring the question of how distinctions are made in these cities between desirable and quasi-illegitimate buildings, or “possible” and “impossible” locations, I analyze city-specific patterns relating to vertical construction. Special attention is paid to urban planning—the activities of those actors who are responsible for developing strategies and implementing and concretizing legal regulations. The discussion draws on a larger research project and is based on the grounded theory research perspective. The data pool includes a large number of published and unpublished documents as well as interviews with actors from the fields of urban planning, architecture, and historic preservation. From a theoretical point of view, the article draws on reflections on the “specificity of cities” and “glocalization” in urban research.

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“…Besides these, the method used in Chapter 2 builds on process tracing methodologies and presents the basis for a within-case inference of urban phenomena by analyzing processes and establishing mechanisms that lead to outcomes. This contributes to emerging efforts in planning studies such as Wood (2022) and Saraiva (2022) who appreciate the significance of tracing processes over time and the outcomes they derive for both analytical, conceptual, and productive comparisons. It further offers a means for drawing inferences from single cases to approve or disapprove theories of urban phenomena.…”

Section: Implications To Methods For Studying Urban Phenomenamentioning

confidence: 95%

Challenges of Improving Livelihoods by Slum Upgrading A Sociotechnical Transitions Perspective

Wainaina¹

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The role of infrastructure in transforming livelihoods is crucial, especially in the global south where over a billion live in conditions without basic service infrastructure for water, sanitation, mobility, solid waste and lighting popularly known as slums. Most such initiatives deliver infrastructures that often fail to improve livelihoods and that even deteriorate a few years later. I investigated how programs aimed at providing such infrastructures can improve slum residents’ livelihoods. To facilitate the investigation, I collected data from 16 slums in Kenya, which were part of the Kenya Informal Settlement Improvement Program that installed new basic service infrastructure in 80 slums. Findings indicated that new infrastructure disrupts or improves the following four dimensions to secure basic services and livelihoods: when residents conduct activities, how they use space, organize around provision and access, and pay. Residents take up such infrastructures critically or complementarily based on whether or not trust is broken during participation, transforming them to fit their needs and maintaining them in cases where the infrastructure has a net value to their livelihoods. In addition, only actors oriented to market thinking e.g. contractors, professionalism e.g., engineers and the community need be collaborative during participation to deliver infrastructure that benefits livelihoods. Lastly, failure to integrate insights about challenges in different slums by different actors to facilitate program learning leads to missed opportunities for improving livelihoods at city and national scales. For infrastructures to improve livelihoods, implementers need to ensure participation retains trust and anticipates post implementation infrastructure appropriation to improve livelihoods, understand and improve capabilities of different actors to involve residents, and plan for and finance program learning. Doing this will ensure sustained infrastructures that improve residents’ livelihoods in the long term.

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Tracing as comparative method

Cited by 5 publications

References 16 publications

Introduction: Generating concepts of ‘the urban’ through comparative practice

Introduction: Generating concepts of ‘the urban’ through comparative practice

High-Rises and Urban Specificity: Politics of Vertical Construction in Paris, London, and Vienna

Challenges of Improving Livelihoods by Slum Upgrading A Sociotechnical Transitions Perspective

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