Comparative Urbanism: New Geographies and Cultures of Theorizing the Urban

In response to the growing interest in ways to take forward an agenda for a more global urban studies, this essay advocates a comparative approach to theory building which can help to develop new understandings of the expanding and diverse world of cities and urbanization processes, building theory from different contexts, resonating with a diversity of urban outcomes but being respectful of the limits of always located insights. The essay is inspired by the potential of the comparative imagination but, mindful of the limitations of formal comparative methods, which in a quasi‐scientific format can drastically restrict the scope of comparing, it outlines ways to reformat comparative methods in order to put them to work more effectively for a more global urban studies. The essay proposes a new typology for comparative methods based on the vernacular practices of urban comparison, tracing these through the archives of comparative urbanism. It also suggests some lines of philosophical reflection for reframing the scope and style of theorizing. New repertoires of comparativism are indicated which support the possibility of a revisable urban theory, starting from anywhere.     

The Tunisian Revolution: Neoliberalism,Urban Contentious Politics and the Right to the City

This article engages in the debate on urban contentious politics by returning to the Tunisian revolution. In the article, I chart movements provoked by neoliberal restructurings, and show how these ultimately came together to form a mass movement demanding radical political change. I first describe the socio‐spatial roots of the Tunisian revolution to understand its dynamics. Based on the chronology of the unfolding events I sketch the classes, social groups and movements that coalesced against authoritarian rule in early 2011. Although the Tunisian revolution started in rural environments, I focus more specifically on the role of urban social movements in the uprising to link questions of urbanism to what were clearly national revolts. Secondly, I outline the scope of neoliberal reforms in Tunisia by looking at the impact of these reforms to chart the resulting emergence of contentious politics in response to the increasing violence that characterized all levels of economic life during this period. I also consider the resulting uneven development and the changing relations between the state and the different social classes. This enables me to reflect on the politicization of the city with the aim of opening up new opportunities for engaging with a more comparative and cosmopolitan theory about cities around the world.     

Critical Urban Theory versus Critical Urban Studies: A Review Debate

Critical urban theory and critical urban studies form the subject of two recent edited collections on approaches to the analysis and transformation of the contemporary capitalist city. In an exchange of commentaries by the respective editors and contributors, the introduction explains the genesis of each book and previews some of the key observations. Peter Marcuse then offers his assessment of Critical Urban Studies: New Directions, which is reciprocated by a commentary on Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City by Jonathan Davies, David Imbroscio and Warren Magnusson.     

Politicizing Undocumented Immigrants One Corner at a Time: How Day Laborers Became a Politically Contentious Group

This article examines how undocumented immigrants become politicized and evolved into a relatively powerful group in the United States. It does so by examining the evolution of day laborers from their humble beginnings in a Los Angeles suburb in the early 1990s into an important component of the national immigrant rights movement today. It addresses the issue by examining the strategic importance of the ‘urban' in enabling stigmatized individuals like undocumented day laborers to overcome major barriers and establish themselves as a vocal and potent group in the public sphere. It suggests that once this group gained a foothold and a sense of itself through urban relational spaces, it experienced enhanced capacities to make rights claims in local and national political arenas. The article uses a case study of immigrant activism in Pasadena and Los Angeles, California, and draws special attention to the evolution of the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON).     

Debate on Margaret Kohn's The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth

This interventions forum presents a debate on Margaret Kohn's The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth. Four contributors from different disciplinary backgrounds discuss and critique Kohn's book, which offers an exploration of the political in an age of modern urbanism. Building on theories of solidarism and social rights, Kohn puts forth a set of new arguments about how the city might be a more governable commonwealth. Her book lays bare some of the great contradictions inherent in questions of the distribution of wealth and space in the metropolis. It builds on classical and current political theory and philosophy, theories of justice, and debates on gentrification and social mobility. The reviewers appreciate the great contribution the book is making to current debates in urban politics, geography and law, but they also point to significant areas for further debate along various lines as laid out by the author. Kohn concludes the debate with a response to the critical interventions.     

Squatting and urban renewal: the interaction of squatter movements and strategies of urban restructuring in Berlin

Squatting as a housing strategy and as a tool of urban social movements accompanies the development of capitalist cities worldwide. We argue that the dynamics of squatter movements are directly connected to strategies of urban renewal in that movement conjunctures occur when urban regimes are in crisis. An analysis of the history of Berlin squatter movements, their political context and their effects on urban policies since the 1970s, clearly shows how massive mobilizations at the beginning of the 1980s and in the early 1990s developed in a context of transition in regimes of urban renewal. The crisis of Fordist city planning at the end of the 1970s provoked a movement of "rehab squatting" ('Instandbesetzung'), which contributed to the institutionalization of "cautious urban renewal" ('behutsame Stadterneuerung') in an important way. The second rupture in Berlin's urban renewal became apparent in 1989 and 1990, when the necessity of restoring whole inner-city districts constituted a new, budget-straining challenge for urban policymaking. Whilst in the 1980s the squatter movement became a central condition for and a political factor of the transition to "cautious urban renewal," in the 1990s large-scale squatting — mainly in the eastern parts of the city — is better understood as an alien element in times of neoliberal urban restructuring.     

Community Leadership and the Construction of Political Legitimacy: Unpacking Bourdieu's ‘Political Capital’ in Post‐Apartheid Johannesburg

Apart from local monographs and normative texts on community participation, research on community leadership constitutes a blind spot in urban leadership, urban politics, social movements and urban studies. This article, based on case studies in post‐apartheid Johannesburg, contributes to theorizing community leadership, or informal local political leadership, by exploring Bourdieu's concepts of ‘political capital’ and ‘double dealings’. Considering community leaders as brokers between local residents and various institutions (in South Africa, the state and the party), we examine how leaders construct their political legitimacy, both towards ‘the bottom’ (building and maintaining their constituencies), and towards ‘the top’ (seeking and sustaining recognition from fractions of the party and the state). These legitimation processes are often in tension, pulling community leaders in contradictory directions, usefully understood under Bourdieu's concept of ‘double dealings’. Community leaders are required, more than formally elected political leaders, to constantly reassert their legitimacy in multiple local public arenas due to the informal nature of their mandate and the high level of political competition between them — with destructive consequences for local polity but also the potential for increased accountability to their followers. We finally reflect on the relevance of this theoretical framework, inspired by Bourdieu, beyond South African urban politics.     

Be Berlin! Governing the City through Freedom

In this article, I examine how contemporary Berlin is governed, with a particular focus on the production of urban space. My points of reference are the term ‘government’ (as employed by Foucault) and the field of governmentality studies (where it is applied empirically). Based on a critical discourse and dispositive analysis of the city's current urban development policy, I propose that urban governance in Berlin may be analysed through the lens of three central dispositives: the dispositive of governing through citizenship; the dispositive of the creative city; and the dispositive of the social city. I discuss the characteristics of these dispositives of urban governance, drawing on a number of examples taken from the discipline of urban space production in order to look specifically at the aims and objectives of governance, its subjects and the ways it manifests itself. In conclusion, I suggest that the new forms of governance based on empowerment and cooperation have by no means replaced disciplinary technologies of governance, but are rather embedded within them.     

Beyond a Livable and Green Neighborhood: Asserting Control,Sovereignty and Transgression in the Casc Antic of Barcelona

During the past 15 years, the Casc Antic, a traditionally low‐income and immigrant neighborhood in Barcelona, has been the site of community‐based mobilization to revitalize abandoned areas and improve local environmental conditions. The organization of residents and their supporters is situated within a broader context of urban political and socioeconomic change — the transformation of the urban economy into a decentralized, global and technology‐ and service‐focused system, accompanied by rising socioeconomic inequality and displacement in inner‐city areas. To date, few studies in the urban environmental arena have been placed within processes of urban change and offer specificity on the purposes, intents and goals that poor and minority residents develop as they understand, resist and challenge their marginality. Why do residents of marginalized neighborhoods and their supporters organize to proactively improve livability and environmental quality? To what extent do the environmental struggles of marginalized communities serve as means to advance more complex political agendas in the city? Through the examination of neighborhood organization for livability in the Casc Antic, I analyze how activists use their environmental endeavors as tools to address stigmas attached to their place, control the land and its boundaries, and build a more transgressive form of democracy.     

San Francisco Through Bogotá’s Eyes: Leveraging Urban Policy Change through the Circulation of Media Objects

This article connects two emerging debates in urban studies—the need to pay more attention to the role of nonhuman actors in urban planning and the ways in which media objects affect urban politics and planning—by examining how a video on Bogotá’s car‐free Ciclovía program facilitated the adoption and implementation of a similar program in San Francisco. The analysis shows that media objects have the capacity to act as fulcrums in processes of leveraging urban policy change owing to their potential to alter urban governance structures. The article analyzes the digital storytelling and ‘eye‐opening’ practices through which the video enabled policy changes to be implemented in San Francisco, while also tracing the local and transnational actors, networks and agendas that were involved in the production and circulation of the video through digital archival research and multi‐sited fieldwork. In doing so, it shows the active role that media objects play in shaping urban policymaking processes and provides an example of a relational methodology for studying the digital materialities through which urban policy ideas increasingly circulate.