[Seminar Cities are back in town] Book launch: The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies. Routledge, 2023

SEMINAR CITIES ARE BACK IN TOWN (WORK IN PROGRESS)

Sciences Po, Online

COMPULSORY REGISTRATION 

The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies is a timely intervention into the field of global urban studies, coming as comparison is being more widely used as a method for global urban studies, and as a number of methodological experiments and comparative research projects are being brought to fruition.

It consolidates and takes forward an emerging field within urban studies and makes a positive and constructive intervention into a lively arena of current debate in urban theory. Comparative urbanism injects a welcome sense of methodological rigor and a commitment to careful evaluation of claims across different contexts, which will enhance current debates in the field. Drawing together more than 50 international scholars and practitioners, this book offers an overview of key ideas and practices in the field and extends current thinking and practice.

Speakers

Patrick Le Galès, FBA, MAE, is CNRS Research Professor of Sociology, Politics and Urban Studies at Sciences Po, Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics. He was the founding Dean of Sciences Po Urban School. He is a co-editor of the European Journal of Sociology/archives Européennes de Sociologie, and the EJS.ARChives. He was once the editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and president of SASE (Society for the Advanced of Socio-Economics).

His urban research was firstly about European cities and urban regions on questions of governance, urban policies, class making and mobility, published as European cities governance and social conflicts (OUP 2002), Changing governance of local economies (with C. Crouch and al., OUP 2004), Globalising minds roots in the city (with A.Andreotti and F. Moreno Fuentes, Wiley 2015), La métropole parisienne comme anarchie organisée (with F.Artioli, Presses de Sciences Po 2023). His current research project WHIG (what is governed and not governed in large metropolis) is based upon the comparison of Paris, London, Sao Paulo and Mexico.

Jennifer Robinson is Professor of Human Geography and co-Director of UCL’s Urban Laboratory. Previously she has worked at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the LSE and the Open University. Her book, Ordinary Cities (Routledge, 2006) developed a post-colonial critique of urban studies.

Her new book, Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), proposes new methodological foundations for urban studies. Earlier empirical research explored the history of apartheid cities, and the politics of post-apartheid city-visioning. Current empirical projects focus on the politics of large-scale urban developments (London, Johannesburg, Shanghai) and the transnational circuits shaping African urbanisation (Accra, Dar es Salaam, Lilongwe).

Discussion:

Bruno Cousin, Sciences Po, CEE

Diane Davis, Harvard University