Mark Davidson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3710723 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Davidson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Davidson |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIDSON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Clark University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0012-4540 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 873 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Shrinkage and urban fiscal governance in times of crisis: A case study of Buffalo, New York
Research on shrinking cities has shown how long-term population and associated economic decline reshape urban governance and constrain fiscal capacity. Yet the budgetary practices through which shrinkage is governed remain relatively underexamined. This paper addresses this gap through a case study of Buffalo, New York, tracing fiscal governance across two major crises: the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on a mixed-met…
Conjunctural analysis and the discipline of political judgment
Matthew Thompson's paper asks a simple question: what is the point of conjunctural analysis? Thompson responds that it needs political purpose. Few would disagree. But Thompson's political grounding of conjunctural analysis ends up doing too much epistemological work. He shows convincingly that conjunctural analysis should not become a fashionable label for identifying complexity. Equally, the approach should not be policed as if it were the prop…
Can urban research be cumulative
Urban research is excellent at generating theories, concepts, and interpretive vocabularies. But it has been less successful at explaining how these theories might accumulate, how they should be compared, and how we know when one explanation improves upon another. This editorial asks whether urban research can be cumulative without reducing the field's theoretical plurality. Building from recent debates on the Chicago School and the revanchist ci…
Urbanization during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom: Some preliminary reflections for future research
Commonality, Multiplicity, and Debate in Urban Research
Urban Theory in Post-Truth Times
Crisis and urban research: Preliminary reflections
In this paper, we reflect on the threads that connect and distinguish our collected essays on cities and crisis. We pull out four themes for further consideration: the (urban) crisis of knowledge; the global/local dimensions of crisis; temporalities; and the connections between democracy and urban crisis. These reflections constitute an invitation for further conversations, both within the pages of the journal and beyond
From the Great Recession to the Post‐Covid 19 Pandemic U.S. Municipal Fiscal Condition: “Austerity Urbanism,” “Pragmatic Municipalism” and On‐Going Explanatory Challenges
How much did the Great Recession change U.S. municipal budgetary and fiscal governance? According to an academic literature that subsequently emerged, the period saw a combination of both change and continuity. The work offered two distinct ways to explain and understand the emerging context: austerity urbanism and pragmatic municipalism. This paper reviews these explanations with the goal of showing how and why they developed contrasting concept…
He's a builder, but does Trump have an urban agenda
For 20 years, turbulence has defined American urbanism. In the late noughties, a global financial crisis pushed many US cities to the brink of bankruptcy. Austerity followed, with belt-tightening squeezing city services. Then came Trump, then came COVID. The pandemic would, unpredictably, make US cities cash rich thanks to the Federal government's largesse. And now we await Trump 2.0. For US cities the prospect of radical change seems real. But w…
Deep reflection and daily life in urban research
The City, Post-Industrialism and Democracy: A View from Orgreave in 1984
Dialoguing on Urban Research in Siloed Times
Is it worth a punt on pensions? A case study of three municipalities’ use of pension obligation bonds
Cities now commonly engage with financial actors, tools, and markets to manage their budgets and associated activities. The growing significance of finance within urban governance is connected by some scholars to the latter’s increasingly speculative character. One area of urban governance where financial tools are now commonly used for speculative ends are public pensions. Across the United States, many state and local governments face large unf…
Conjunctural urban geographies: Modes, methods, and meso-level concepts
Urban geographers have recently been developing “conjunctural analysis.” This paper contributes to this emerging project in two ways. First, it argues that the existing literature has overlooked a critically important theoretical distinction—between normative and rationalist analysis. Second, we develop three meso-level concepts—plasticity, composites, temporalities—to provide concrete guidance on doing conjunctural analysis. We use the example o…
Dialogues, Urban Research, and Times of War
On complexity, metaphor, and urbanization
Participatory budgeting as democratization? The post-bankruptcy democratization of Vallejo, California
Theorists often suggest that participation within the political process is a necessary component of a democratic society. Participation enables power to be distributed throughout society thus ensuring some degree of political equality, a core premise of democracy. Over the past decade, a novel form of citizen participation within city budgeting that was developed in Porto Alegre, Brazil—participatory budgeting—has become an increasingly popular t…
Situational analysis and urban theory
Urban geographers have been pursuing divergent theoretical projects. Some have pushed urban theory to become ageographical, the goal being to search out and explain of a globally omnipotent urbanization process. Others have moved in a different direction, seeking to detail how singular constellations of processes produce only particular urban places. This theoretical divergence has led some to question whether middle-range urban theories continue…
Post-great recession municipal budgeting and governance: A mixed methods analysis of budget stress and reform
The Great Recession hit several U.S. cities hard. Facing large revenue losses, these cities undertook dramatic spending cuts and utilized rarely used restructuring tools. This led some to speculate that these were exemplars of austerity urbanism. Subsequent work has contested this interpretation, arguing instead that cities have generally pursued pragmatic, not austere, reform. This paper seeks to move beyond this impasse, developing a mixed meth…
The Post–Great Recession Geographies of U.S. Municipal Borrowing and Indebtedness
Borrowing from capital markets has a long history in U.S. urban government. With federal authorities withdrawing fiscal support since the 1980s, U.S. cities have become more entrepreneurial and increased their reliance on borrowing. Some now claim that this reliance has grown since the Great Recession. Despite the significance of borrowing to U.S. urban governments, municipal indebtedness remains a relatively understudied topic within geography. …
Between passion and reason: Rethinking critical urban scholarship in populist times
CITY has always been a forum for passionate urban scholarship. But what role do the passions play in urbanization(s) today? And should we even make room in urban scholarship for such a volatile part of the human condition? Across the vast breadth of contemporary urban scholarship, today we find deeply paradoxical answers to these questions. So much contemporary urbanization is explained as being confined and codified by free-market rationalities …
Postpolitical City
The contentious concept of the “postpolitical” identifies the absence of the possibility of structural social reform. In democratic societies, this means that reforms which might reaffirm the founding premise that citizens are equal is silenced. The postpolitical city is therefore a space lacking in certain political claims. Conflicts might abound, but these are not framed in ways that challenge the very structures of the society in which the con…
Extreme municipal fiscal stress and austerity? A case study of fiscal reform after Chapter 9 bankruptcy
Post-recession urban restructuring in the U.S. has involved national and state governments pushing budget problems to the local level, with municipalities implementing a variety of responsive reforms. Although the term “austerity” has often been used to characterize these reforms, others have argued municipal responses to fiscal stress have been largely “pragmatic”. Disagreement therefore exists about the extent to which austerity is a post-reces…
From Big to Small Cities: A Qualitative Analysis of the Causes and Outcomes of Post–Recession Municipal Bankruptcies
Two cities loom large in the history of American urban restructuring. New York City's 1975 technical bankruptcy and Detroit's 2013 Chapter 9 bankruptcy have played an oversized role in urban theory. This is currently reflected in competing theories of post–recession urban restructuring. “Austerity urbanism” uses Detroit as an exemplar, whereas “pragmatic municipalism” adopts the converse position arguing post–recession reform is defined by local …
Going bust two ways? Epistemic communities and the study of urban policy failure
Urban geographers are becoming more concerned with “policy failure”. This raises questions about how “policy failure” should be conceptualized. The public policy literature, with its detailed classifications and categorizations of policy failure, is an obvious potential resource for urban geographers. However, supplementing predominant urban geographical analysis with public policy frameworks presents significant epistemological challenges. The l…
New-Build 'Gentrification' and London's Riverside Renaissance
In a recent conference paper Lambert and Boddy (2002) questioned whether new-build residential developments in UK city centres were examples of gentrification. They concluded that this stretched the term too far and coined 'residentialisation' as an alternative term. In contrast, we argue in this paper that new-build residential developments in city centres are examples of gentrification. We argue that new-build gentrification is part and parcel …
New‐build gentrification: Its histories, trajectories, and critical geographies
New‐build gentrification has been the subject of renewed attention of late. The impetus was Lambert and Boddy, who asserted that inner‐city new‐build developments in British city centres should not be viewed as a form of gentrification. While the term has long been generally accepted, Lambert and Boddy, and, more recently, Boddy, argue that the demographic transformations stimulated by city centre new‐build developments are relatively innocuous. …
Spoiled Mixture: Where Does State-led `Positive' Gentrification End
Over the past decade, policy-makers have introduced social mixing initiatives that have sought to address urban social problems by deconcentrating poor and working-class communities through attracting the middle classes back to the city. Such a policy objective clearly `smells like gentrification'. However, some commentators have warned against being critical of these policies, pointing out that the types of inner-city redevelopment generated by …
Recovering the politics of the city: From the ‘post-political city’ to a ‘method of equality’ for critical urban geography
This paper uses Jacque Rancière's understanding of politics to ask what makes cities political entities. We review existing urban geography debates to identify some of the defining features of urban politics and then subject them to critical questioning: are they actually political? The paper seeks to develop existing interpretations of Rancière's philosophy within geography to develop his ‘method of equality’ in order to recover the politics of …
Displacement, Space and Dwelling: Placing Gentrification Debate
This paper is concerned with the conceptualisations of space which underlie debate of gentrification-related displacement. Using Derrida's concept of the spatial metaphor, the paper illuminates the Cartesian understandings of space that act as architecture for displacement debate. The paper corrects this through arguing that the philosophy of Heidegger and Lefebvre better serves to understand displacement. Emphasising the topology of Heidegger's …
Gentrification as global habitat: A process of class formation or corporate creation
The relationship between gentrification and globalisation has recently become a significant concern for gentrification scholars. This has involved developing an understanding of how gentrification has become a place‐based strategy of class (re)formation during an era in which globalisation has changed sociological structures and challenged previously established indicators of social distinction. This paper offers an alternative reading of the rel…
Picking up the pieces: Austerity urbanism, California and fiscal crisis
California continues to be at the epicentre of the Great Recession. Cities around the state are facing a multiple-fronted assault on their fiscal situation. Although not new - the state's precarious financial situation is the stuff of legends - the cutting in federal reserves, together with the decline in property taxes stemming from the drop in house prices and the rising costs of servicing debt incurred through years of speculative growth strat…
Beyond city limits: A conceptual and political defense of ‘the city’ as an anchoring concept for critical urban theory
With the publication of their piece 'Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban?' in City 19 (2-3), Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid hoped to ignite a debate about the adequacy of existing epistemologies for understanding urban life today. Brenner and Schmid's desire to set urban research on a new course is premised on a wide-ranging critique of 'city-centrism' that they believe is holding back both mainstream and critical urban research. In this p…
Sustainability as ideological praxis: The acting out of planning’s master‐signifier
The rise and rise of sustainability in urban and social policy circles has transformed the discursive terrain of urban politics. In 2009, Gunder and Hillier argued sustainability is now urban planning’s central empty signifier, offering an overarching narrative around which practice can be oriented. This paper takes up the notion of sustainability as an empty/master‐signifier, arguing that the recognition of its nominal status is central to under…
Class-ifying London: Questioning social division and space claims in the post-industrial metropolis
Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class of 2002 ends with a clarion call for a post-industrial, post-class sensibility: 'The task of building a truly creative society is not a game of solitaire. This game, we play as a team.' Florida's sentiment has been echoed across a broad and interdisciplinary literature in social theory and public policy, producing a new conventional wisdom: that class antagonisms are redundant in today's climate of com…
Love Thy Neighbour? Social Mixing in London's Gentrification Frontiers
The issue of social mixing has recently moved to the forefront of gentrification debate. In part, this has been stimulated by neoliberal urban policies promoting 'social mix', research showing the inability of gentrified neighbourhoods to remain socially mixed and attempts to rethink the association between gentrification and displacement. This paper draws upon a mixed-methods study that examined levels of social mixing between gentrifying and in…
Occupations, mediations, subjectifications: Fabricating politics
The revolutions and protests that have spread across the globe since 2008 have been seen as a watershed moment. In this article we examine the relationships between urban space and politics that have emerged across these events. We draw upon the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière to provide a framework to understand some events of this period as political moments and, in addition, attempt to build upon Rancière's work to trace out the geogr…
The Sustainable and Entrepreneurial Park? Contradictions and Persistent Antagonisms at Sydney's Olympic Park
Urban parks have long been used by policy makers to achieve specific policy goals. In recent years, two sets of policy goals have become commonly associated with park planning. The first set of goals can be characterized as being neoliberal, where parks have been built and reformed to generate certain economic and governmental outcomes. The second set of policy goals is associated with sustainability, where parks have been utilized as tools in su…
Critical Commentary . Gentrification in Crisis: Towards Consensus or Disagreement
Grassroots austerity: Municipal bankruptcy from below in Vallejo, California
Austerity appears to be a globally coordinated restructuring process, where international and national governments cooperate to stymie economic crisis and socialize the costs of systemic economic failure. However, austerity is also shaped from the bottomup. This paper examines the 2008 bankruptcy of Vallejo, California. This city of under 120 000 people became the first municipal bankruptcy in the Great Recession period. We explore how it became …
Conjunctural urban geographies: Modes, methods, and meso-level concepts
Urban geographers have recently been developing “conjunctural analysis.” This paper contributes to this emerging project in two ways. First, it argues that the existing literature has overlooked a critically important theoretical distinction—between normative and rationalist analysis. Second, we develop three meso-level concepts—plasticity, composites, temporalities—to provide concrete guidance on doing conjunctural analysis. We use the example o…
Sustainable City as Fantasy
There can be little doubt that our current ecological crisis is being framed through the idea of sustainability. As we plan to deal with anthropogenic climate change, we talk of becoming more sustainable. We are projecting a sustainability vision; a certain future that we desire to achieve. In this paper I offer a Lacanian interpretation of this vision, arguing that we must understand how ideas such as the “sustainable city” operate as fantasy co…
Social Sustainability and the City
Over the past 25 years, sustainability has become a key consideration for city governments. However, many sustainability initiatives have remained dogged by the concept's nebulous character. The development of the triple-bottom-line conceptualization of sustainability - environment, economy, society - has been seen as potentially offering a solution to this problem. This paper reviews recent engagements in academic and policy debates with the lea…
Going bust two ways? Epistemic communities and the study of urban policy failure
Urban geographers are becoming more concerned with “policy failure”. This raises questions about how “policy failure” should be conceptualized. The public policy literature, with its detailed classifications and categorizations of policy failure, is an obvious potential resource for urban geographers. However, supplementing predominant urban geographical analysis with public policy frameworks presents significant epistemological challenges. The l…
Same, but different: Within London's ‘static’ class structure and the missing antagonism
In this paper, we discuss (Manley, D., and R. Johnston. 2014. 'London: A Dividing City, 2001-11?' City 18 (6): 633-643) intervention into recent debates on London's contemporary class structure. We find that Manley and Johnston show evidence to support many of the claims we have previously made, providing further support against the argument that London has become increasingly a middle-class (Butler, T., C. Hamnett, and M. Ramsden. 2008. 'Inward …
The Redevelopment of Olympic Sites: Examining the Legacy of Sydney Olympic Park
This paper examines the redevelopment of the site of Sydney’s 2000 summer Olympics, locating it within debates over the legacy of these events. The paper describes some of the key stakeholders involved in the redevelopment and planning of the site. It provides an overview of the regulatory context and governance bodies that have structured the space since the staging of the Olympics, then identifies two key areas of private-sector involvement, in…
Post-great recession municipal budgeting and governance: A mixed methods analysis of budget stress and reform
The Great Recession hit several U.S. cities hard. Facing large revenue losses, these cities undertook dramatic spending cuts and utilized rarely used restructuring tools. This led some to speculate that these were exemplars of austerity urbanism. Subsequent work has contested this interpretation, arguing instead that cities have generally pursued pragmatic, not austere, reform. This paper seeks to move beyond this impasse, developing a mixed meth…
Negotiating Particularity in Neoliberalism Studies: Tracing Development Strategies Across Neoliberal Urban Governance Projects
A reading of critical perspectives on neoliberalism would suggest that it is dead but dominant, a revanchist zombie that appears paradoxically ubiquitous despite its inherent idiosyncrasy. We argue that neoliberalism's paradoxical death, dominance, and retrenchment can be interpreted by analyzing the dialectic of universalizing processes and particular forms within capitalism. Neoliberal projects draw political import from systemic, universalizin…
Hacking Away at Sustainability: Science, Ideology and Cynical Blockage
In 2009 sustainability took some major hits. At the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, no agreement was reached over reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Nor was there any discussion about reductions that would keep climate change within “safe limits”. Add to this “climategate” where the hacked emails of climate scientists in the UK revealed problematic data showing declining global temperatures had been deleted to avoid fuelling skeptici…
Extreme municipal fiscal stress and austerity? A case study of fiscal reform after Chapter 9 bankruptcy
Post-recession urban restructuring in the U.S. has involved national and state governments pushing budget problems to the local level, with municipalities implementing a variety of responsive reforms. Although the term “austerity” has often been used to characterize these reforms, others have argued municipal responses to fiscal stress have been largely “pragmatic”. Disagreement therefore exists about the extent to which austerity is a post-reces…
Constructivism and computer‐mediated communication in distance education
The fields of learning theory and instructional design are in the midst of a scientific revolution in which their objectivist philosophical foundations are being replaced by a constructivist epistemology. This article describes the assumptions of a constructivist epistemology, contrasts them with objectivist assumptions, and then describes instructional systems that can support constructive learning at a distance.
Reflections on current developments in contemporary urban geography
The UGRG post-graduate conference held at theUniversity of Reading on 30 November 2002provided a forum for PhD students from various UKuniversities to come together to discuss not onlytheir own research but to reflect on currentdevelopments in contemporary urban geography inthe UK and elsewhere. The format of the day-longmeeting was divided into a morning devoted togroup discussions of three recent publications (Aminand Thrift 2002; Dear and Flus…
New-Build 'Gentrification' and London's Riverside Renaissance
In a recent conference paper Lambert and Boddy (2002) questioned whether new-build residential developments in UK city centres were examples of gentrification. They concluded that this stretched the term too far and coined 'residentialisation' as an alternative term. In contrast, we argue in this paper that new-build residential developments in city centres are examples of gentrification. We argue that new-build gentrification is part and parcel …
Gentrification as global habitat: A process of class formation or corporate creation
The relationship between gentrification and globalisation has recently become a significant concern for gentrification scholars. This has involved developing an understanding of how gentrification has become a place‐based strategy of class (re)formation during an era in which globalisation has changed sociological structures and challenged previously established indicators of social distinction. This paper offers an alternative reading of the rel…
Spoiled Mixture: Where Does State-led `Positive' Gentrification End
Over the past decade, policy-makers have introduced social mixing initiatives that have sought to address urban social problems by deconcentrating poor and working-class communities through attracting the middle classes back to the city. Such a policy objective clearly `smells like gentrification'. However, some commentators have warned against being critical of these policies, pointing out that the types of inner-city redevelopment generated by …
Displacement, Space and Dwelling: Placing Gentrification Debate
This paper is concerned with the conceptualisations of space which underlie debate of gentrification-related displacement. Using Derrida's concept of the spatial metaphor, the paper illuminates the Cartesian understandings of space that act as architecture for displacement debate. The paper corrects this through arguing that the philosophy of Heidegger and Lefebvre better serves to understand displacement. Emphasising the topology of Heidegger's …
Hacking Away at Sustainability: Science, Ideology and Cynical Blockage
In 2009 sustainability took some major hits. At the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, no agreement was reached over reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Nor was there any discussion about reductions that would keep climate change within “safe limits”. Add to this “climategate” where the hacked emails of climate scientists in the UK revealed problematic data showing declining global temperatures had been deleted to avoid fuelling skeptici…
New‐build gentrification: Its histories, trajectories, and critical geographies
New‐build gentrification has been the subject of renewed attention of late. The impetus was Lambert and Boddy, who asserted that inner‐city new‐build developments in British city centres should not be viewed as a form of gentrification. While the term has long been generally accepted, Lambert and Boddy, and, more recently, Boddy, argue that the demographic transformations stimulated by city centre new‐build developments are relatively innocuous. …
Sustainability as ideological praxis: The acting out of planning’s master‐signifier
The rise and rise of sustainability in urban and social policy circles has transformed the discursive terrain of urban politics. In 2009, Gunder and Hillier argued sustainability is now urban planning’s central empty signifier, offering an overarching narrative around which practice can be oriented. This paper takes up the notion of sustainability as an empty/master‐signifier, arguing that the recognition of its nominal status is central to under…
Social Sustainability and the City
Over the past 25 years, sustainability has become a key consideration for city governments. However, many sustainability initiatives have remained dogged by the concept's nebulous character. The development of the triple-bottom-line conceptualization of sustainability - environment, economy, society - has been seen as potentially offering a solution to this problem. This paper reviews recent engagements in academic and policy debates with the lea…
Love Thy Neighbour? Social Mixing in London's Gentrification Frontiers
The issue of social mixing has recently moved to the forefront of gentrification debate. In part, this has been stimulated by neoliberal urban policies promoting 'social mix', research showing the inability of gentrified neighbourhoods to remain socially mixed and attempts to rethink the association between gentrification and displacement. This paper draws upon a mixed-methods study that examined levels of social mixing between gentrifying and in…
Is liberalism drowning in debt? The impact of private debt on individual liberty
Over the past 30 years, neoliberal economic policies have resulted in a massive increase of personal debt among Canadians. Well over half of Canadians borrow money to pay for non-discretionary forms of consumption. The impact of these debts, primarily among those who borrow money to pay for necessities, often undermines the ostensible goals of neoliberalism, that is, individual freedom. The effects of these debts are tantamount to the effects of …
Critical Commentary . Gentrification in Crisis: Towards Consensus or Disagreement
Gated Communities: Social Sustainability in Contemporary and Historical Gated Developments - Edited by Samer Bagaeen and Ola Uduku
Sustainable City as Fantasy
There can be little doubt that our current ecological crisis is being framed through the idea of sustainability. As we plan to deal with anthropogenic climate change, we talk of becoming more sustainable. We are projecting a sustainability vision; a certain future that we desire to achieve. In this paper I offer a Lacanian interpretation of this vision, arguing that we must understand how ideas such as the “sustainable city” operate as fantasy co…
The 20: 12 Express: Destination
Class-ifying London: Questioning social division and space claims in the post-industrial metropolis
Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class of 2002 ends with a clarion call for a post-industrial, post-class sensibility: 'The task of building a truly creative society is not a game of solitaire. This game, we play as a team.' Florida's sentiment has been echoed across a broad and interdisciplinary literature in social theory and public policy, producing a new conventional wisdom: that class antagonisms are redundant in today's climate of com…
The Redevelopment of Olympic Sites: Examining the Legacy of Sydney Olympic Park
This paper examines the redevelopment of the site of Sydney’s 2000 summer Olympics, locating it within debates over the legacy of these events. The paper describes some of the key stakeholders involved in the redevelopment and planning of the site. It provides an overview of the regulatory context and governance bodies that have structured the space since the staging of the Olympics, then identifies two key areas of private-sector involvement, in…
In the middle of a revolution … so where the hell is Stringer Bell
According to Paul Mason's account of 2011, we are in the middle of a revolution; a moment of social upheaval that must be measured against 1848, 1917 and 1968. This article assesses Mason's eloquent description of capitalist crisis by distinguishing between three different parts of it: ideological failure, politico-ideological refusal and social change. Slavoj Žižek's theories of ideology and recent commentary on 2011's revolutionary events are d…
Picking up the pieces: Austerity urbanism, California and fiscal crisis
California continues to be at the epicentre of the Great Recession. Cities around the state are facing a multiple-fronted assault on their fiscal situation. Although not new - the state's precarious financial situation is the stuff of legends - the cutting in federal reserves, together with the decline in property taxes stemming from the drop in house prices and the rising costs of servicing debt incurred through years of speculative growth strat…
Class analysis for whom: An alien-ated view of London
In a valuable and engaging critique, Hamnett and Butler conclude that our analysis of the socio-spatial dimensions of inequality in London originates from a ‘parallel universe’, that it is ‘bizarre’ for us ‘middle-class university professors’ to claim that ‘the middle class does not exist,’ and that our approach involves 'looking into the rear view mirror or class structure in the 1840s.' In this paper we provide a response, and we reiterate the …
The Sustainable and Entrepreneurial Park? Contradictions and Persistent Antagonisms at Sydney's Olympic Park
Urban parks have long been used by policy makers to achieve specific policy goals. In recent years, two sets of policy goals have become commonly associated with park planning. The first set of goals can be characterized as being neoliberal, where parks have been built and reformed to generate certain economic and governmental outcomes. The second set of policy goals is associated with sustainability, where parks have been utilized as tools in su…
Negotiating Particularity in Neoliberalism Studies: Tracing Development Strategies Across Neoliberal Urban Governance Projects
A reading of critical perspectives on neoliberalism would suggest that it is dead but dominant, a revanchist zombie that appears paradoxically ubiquitous despite its inherent idiosyncrasy. We argue that neoliberalism's paradoxical death, dominance, and retrenchment can be interpreted by analyzing the dialectic of universalizing processes and particular forms within capitalism. Neoliberal projects draw political import from systemic, universalizin…
Occupations, mediations, subjectifications: Fabricating politics
The revolutions and protests that have spread across the globe since 2008 have been seen as a watershed moment. In this article we examine the relationships between urban space and politics that have emerged across these events. We draw upon the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière to provide a framework to understand some events of this period as political moments and, in addition, attempt to build upon Rancière's work to trace out the geogr…
Recovering the politics of the city: From the ‘post-political city’ to a ‘method of equality’ for critical urban geography
This paper uses Jacque Rancière's understanding of politics to ask what makes cities political entities. We review existing urban geography debates to identify some of the defining features of urban politics and then subject them to critical questioning: are they actually political? The paper seeks to develop existing interpretations of Rancière's philosophy within geography to develop his ‘method of equality’ in order to recover the politics of …
Sociology (39 works) · Political science (35 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (32 works) · Law (28 works) · Politics (23 works) · Economics (21 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Geography (17 works) · Political economy (16 works)