City Seminar - 4 March 2014 - Theorising Cities Now

Theorising Cities Now: Putting Comparison to Work for Global Urban StudiesDr Jennifer Robinson (University College London) Abstract This paper argues that global urbanism, the commitment to producing an understanding of the urban which is potentially open to the experiences of all cities – to a world of cities – is best served by a comparative imagination. The spatiality of theorising the urban experience maps well onto the core elements of a comparative imagination – thinking across different “cases” to produce conceptualisations which contribute to wider understandings of the processes being analysed, and which might then, in turn, be considered in relation to other contexts or cases. However, as the comparative methods which have conventionally underpinned urban studies are not well placed to serve the project for a more global urbanism the paper will present some tactics for a reformatted comparativism. Reconfiguring the tactics and form of the comparative imagination align