091R_The political premises of contemporary urban concepts: the global city, the sustainable city, the resilient city, the creative city, and the smart city (research summary)

Are you interested in contemporary urban concepts, like sustainable and resilient city, and their political premises? 

Summary of the article titled The political premises of contemporary urban concepts: the global city, the sustainable city, the resilient city, the creative city, and the smart city from 2018 by Tali Hatuka, Issachar Rosen-Zvi, Michael Birnhack, Eran Toch, and Hadas Zur, published in the Planning Theory and Practice journal. 

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how these urban concepts compare. This article presents their juxtaposition and the possibility of them becoming prescriptive for decision-makers and developers.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

Urban futures, like the global, sustainable, resilient, creative and smart cities are individually presented in the literature, while in practice they are used together, so there is a gap for researchers to bridge.
These ideas can lose their cores and meanings in implementation because they are morphed to the specific city’s economy and political structure – these can be cured with constructive criticism and revisions.
These concepts should be in the planners and decision-makers’ toolbox rather then prescriptive ideas, to use them for real change in urban areas with attention to how they will affect people’s lives.

You can find the article through this link.

Abstract: Numerous studies have focused on the global city, the sustainable city, the resilient city, the creative city, and the smart city, analyzing their politics, ideologies, and social implications. However, the literature lacks synthetic analysis that addresses these concepts by juxtaposing them and exploring their similarities and differences. This paper provides synthetic analysis, followed by a discussion of the concepts’ competing and complementary logics of governance and citizenship. The concluding section addresses the importance of taking into account these diverse concepts as political ideas and discusses how these concepts become a prescriptive mix promoted by public officials and private developers.

You can find the transcripts through this link.

What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.

I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.

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