Interested in how cities learn from each other? Wonder how it is that some policies seem to appear in a number of cities around the world? Concerned over the ‘industry’ that seems to have emerged around the moving of policies from one city to another?
A new book is about to hit the shelves in the next month that addresses these questions. Edited by Eugene McCann (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) and Kevin Ward (University of Manchester) Mobile Urbanism provides a unique set of perspectives on the current global-urban condition. Drawing on cutting-edge theoretical work, leading geographers reveal that cities are not isolated objects of study; rather, they are dynamic, global–local assemblages of policies, practices, and ideas.
The essays in this volume argue for a theorizing of both urban policymaking and place-making that understands them as groups of territorial and relational geographies. It broadens our comprehension of agents of transference, reconceiving how policies are made mobile, and acknowledging the importance of interlocal policy mobility. Through the richness of its empirical examples from Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia, contributors bring to light the significant methodological challenges that researchers face in the study of an urban–global, territorial–relational conceptualization of cities and suggest productive new approaches to understanding urbanism in a networked world.
Contributors are: S. Harris Ali, York University, Toronto; Allan Cochrane, Open University; Roger Keil , York University, Toronto; Doreen Massey, Open University; Donald McNeill, University of Western Sydney; Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia; Jennifer Robinson, University College London.
Further details can be found at:
cities@manchester 