ARCH 211 | The City (Undergraduate Lecture, Spring 2022)

Urban Studies, 2016

For some time now, the field of urban studies has been attempting to figure the urban whilst cognisant of the fact that the city exists as a highly problematic category of analysis. In this virtual special issue, we draw together some examples of what we call urban concepts under stress; concepts which appear to be reaching the limits of their capacity to render knowable a world characterised by the death of the city and the ascent of multi-scalar de-territorialisations and re-territorialisations. We organise the papers selected for inclusion into three bundles dealing respectively with complex urban systems, the hinterland problematic and governing cities in the age of flows. The phenomenon of urban concepts under stress stems from the existence of a gap between existing cartographies, visualisations and lexicons of the urban and 21st century spatial conditions and territorialities. Given that this disarticulation will surely increase as this century unfolds, a pressing question pr...

Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of The Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2019

Crossing Bound aries The Global Exchange of Planning Ideas Carol a Hein Commodity flows, information streams, and diverse migratory movements have long carried ideas of urban form and function around the world, inspiring people to transform and erect buildings, to change their cities, and to develop the rural spaces around them. Studies of transnationalism and transnational urbanism have engaged with these migrations and the largely unplanned changes they produced in built and urban form and examined how these spaces shape further transnational practices. 1 But many of these same studies neglect the role of professional planners. For their part, planning historians have failed to engage with the larger frameworks in which urban ideas and plans travel, though they have assembled numerous case studies of the transmission of planning ideas across multiple bound aries, exploring diverse instances of imposition and borrowing. 2 These two explorations merit an interconnected analy sis, reading transnational migratory flows and the transmission of planning ideas and practices in light of each other, offering a more complex and integrative approach to the study of planning in border crossings and its effect on the urban environment. Following an examination of terminology, this chapter illustrates how planners have operated in the realms of transnational and cross-cultural urbanism and migration: as employees of global networks of private corporations, as agents of international institutions, as private mi grants, and as writers and designers. It shows how diff er ent types of institutionalized and individual

Global urban history is not the only approach that seeks to transcend national perspectives on the urban past.

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2012

Mevrouw de Rector Magnificus, Geachte Collega's en Gewaardeerde Toehoorders, I want to use this opportunity to reflect on the nature of the field of Urban Studies. In accordance with the international orientation of the field and in the presence of our own international staff, I will do so in English. My lecture will discuss the field of Urban Studies mainly from a purely academic point of view, the opportunities it offers but also some of its intrinsic challenges. It is a broad field and my words today will reflect my own views, my affection for the sort of broad historical-geographical scholarship of the likes of Lewis Mumford, Fernand Braudel, Peter Hall, John Friedmann, Richard Walker, or Gyan Prakash. I will refer to some of my own research, but I will also aim at what I consider to be the field of Urban Studies at large. My main argument is that the urban scale provides a critical lens on the social world, particularly in the present era of globalization. And while Urban Studies is evidently associated with the city, I will argue that the urban is about more than the city. The lecture is rather wide-ranging and will for the most part be situated somewhere between Amsterdam, the United States, and India, and I will appeal to your versatile imagination as we jump around the globe. The renewed attention to the field of Urban Studies is also driven by interested parties and stakeholders outside the academy, including government and the corporate sector. So I will include some remarks about the social relevance of the field and how we might position the Centre for Urban Studies inside and outside of the university. Inaugural speeches generally focus on the speaker's specific area of expertise but since my appointment is closely related to the Research Priority Area in Urban Studies and the establishment of the new Centre, I should also reflect on the general nature of the field, some of the big questions, and where it fits. As a result, there is quite some breadth to my lecture, maybe a bit unusually so, and I ask you to bear with me. Urban studies Let me start off with some general observations. There are two intriguing qualities of the field of Urban Studies that explain its appeal and at the same time 

2000

The author analyzes the political geography of globally expanding urban informalities. These are conceptualized as 'gray spaces', positioned between the 'whiteness' of legality/approval/safety, and the 'blackness' of eviction/destruction/death. The vast expansion of gray spaces in contemporary cities reflects the emergence of new types of colonial relations, which are managed by urban regimes facilitating a process of 'creeping apartheid'. Planning is

The Many Facets of Global Studies: Perspectives from the Erasmus Mundus Global Studies Programme, edited by Konstanze Loeke and Matthias Middell (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag), 2019

If globalization is a historical process of large-scale integration and intensified interaction through flows of people, goods, capital and ideas, then it seems natural that global studies primarily focuses on these movements and on interaction and integration between different places, rather than on particular localities. On top of that, the words 'flows' and 'integration' may project a false impression of smooth and homogenizing developments, whereas in fact inequality, asymmetries, conflict and domination are intrinsic to processes of globalization. One possible way to overcome the trap of charming linear narratives that are not rooted in particular places is to formulate precise empirical research questions. Specifying where, when and by whom flows, integration and interaction were produced, helps to identify different perspectives, practices and experiences of globalization. Historicizing, space-specific and actor-oriented approaches enable global studies scholars to combine the investigation of macro-processes of globalization with empirical micro-research that lays bare specific instances and different intensities of interactions and integration. Along with several contributions to this textbook (e.g. insular history, cultural brokerage, the countryside and gender to name but a few), this essay on

In the midst of what has been termed the "urban age," two divergent approaches to understanding life in cities have emerged. In this first of three urban geography Progress Reports, I engage these two strands of urban theory, identifying key differences in their intellectual, political and geographical genealogies, and consider their political and epistemological implications. Borrowing from Chakrabarty's concept of History 1 and History 2, I name these approaches "Urbanization 1" and "Urbanization 2." Urbanization 1 is exemplified by the planetary urbanization thesis that posits the complete urbanization of society, whereas Urbanization 2 is characterized by a more diverse set of interventions, united by a political and epistemological strategy of refusing Eurocentrism and "provincializing" urban theory.

This essay, published as the final chapter in Peter Clark (ed.), Oxford Handbook to Cities in World History (2013), assesses the role that urban development has played in major theories of world history, and analyses the elements of continuity, slow change and dramatic upheaval that are contributing to global urbanisation. This process has become one of humanity's greatest achievements, creating a global web of cities which are 'pulsing with creative organisation and disorganisation - and alive'.