How can we empirically grasp and map the spatiality of large urban territories? How can we learn from very different urban experiences? How can we enhance and differentiate our vocabulary of urbanization? These questions serve as starting points to discuss the book Vocabularies for an Urbanising Planet: Theory Building through Comparison edited by Christian Schmid and Monika Streule. In this book, an interdisciplinary team of researchers present an expanded vocabulary of urbanisation processes through a comparison of Tokyo, Hong Kong – Shenzhen – Dongguan, Kolkata, Istanbul, Lagos, Paris, Mexico City and Los Angeles. Based on a novel method of cartography and on detailed ethnographic and historical explorations, they systematically analyse the diversity of responses to urgent contemporary urban challenges. They propose a series of new concepts that allow us to assess the practical consequences of different urban strategies in everyday life. Together with special guests we invite for a critical reflection on comparative urbanism and a discussion of mapping as a crucial tool for the analysis of urbanisation processes.
Discussants are Philip Harrison, Pushpa Arabindoo, Juan Miguel Kanai, Hyun Shin and Catalina Ortiz. Panel organizers are Christian Schmid and Monika Streule.
Sponsered by the RGS Urban Geography Research Group.
Vocabularies for an Urbanising Planet: Theory Building through Comparison (Birkhäuser, 2023) edited by Christian Schmid and Monika Streule. With contributions by Naomi Hanakata; Ozan Karaman; Anne Kockelkorn; Lindsay Sawyer; Christian Schmid; Monika Streule; Kit Ping Wong.
ISBN: 978-3-0356-2301-7
NEW: Open access! eBook available here
