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All Outputs (95)

Interrogating ‘urban social innovation’: relationality and urban change in Berlin (2021)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C., Langley, P., Lewis, S., Painter, J., & Vradis, A. (2023). Interrogating ‘urban social innovation’: relationality and urban change in Berlin. Urban Geography, 44(2), 337-357. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.2003586

The relationship between the city and ‘innovation’ is long and varied, but in recent years there has been a new focus on the potential of innovation to catalyse economic, social, and environmental change. This has led to a debate around whether and h... Read More about Interrogating ‘urban social innovation’: relationality and urban change in Berlin.

Repopulating density: Covid-19 and the politics of urban value (2021)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C. (2023). Repopulating density: Covid-19 and the politics of urban value. Urban Studies, 60(9), 1548-1569. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211014810

How might concepts of ‘value’ and ‘population’ illuminate the present and future of urban density? The Covid-19 pandemic prompted a public debate on density in the city. While some initially blamed density for the spread of the virus, others rightly... Read More about Repopulating density: Covid-19 and the politics of urban value.

The Crowd and Citylife: Materiality, Negotiation, and Inclusivity at Tokyo’s Train Stations (2021)
Journal Article
Chowdhury, R., & McFarlane, C. (2022). The Crowd and Citylife: Materiality, Negotiation, and Inclusivity at Tokyo’s Train Stations. Urban Studies, 59(7), 1353-1371

In the history of urban thought, density has been closely indexed to the idea of citylife. Drawing on commuters’ experiences and perception of crowds in and around Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, this article offers an ethnographic perspective on the relat... Read More about The Crowd and Citylife: Materiality, Negotiation, and Inclusivity at Tokyo’s Train Stations.

Introduction: rethinking urban density (2020)
Journal Article
Chen, H.-Y., Chowdhury, R., McFarlane, C., & Tripathy, P. (2020). Introduction: rethinking urban density. Urban Geography, 41(10), 1241-1246. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1854531

In this piece, we introduce a special issue on “Rethinking Urban Density” which asks: what are the meanings and implications of density in cities today? How might we understand and research it? This collection offers a set of reflections on urban den... Read More about Introduction: rethinking urban density.

The force of density: political crowding and the city (2020)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C. (2020). The force of density: political crowding and the city. Urban Geography, 41(10), 1310-1317. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1837527

This commentary examines the politics of density in urban protest and social movements, drawing on examples from Hong Kong and Mumbai. The ‘force’ of density, I argue, is an emergent property shaped through the combinatory relations and forms of pres... Read More about The force of density: political crowding and the city.

Crowdfunding cities: Social entrepreneurship, speculation and solidarity in Berlin (2020)
Journal Article
Langley, P., Lewis, S., McFarlane, C., Painter, J., & Vradis, A. (2020). Crowdfunding cities: Social entrepreneurship, speculation and solidarity in Berlin. Geoforum, 115, 11-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.06.014

Situated at the intersection of urban and economic geography, this paper develops and illustrates a three-step research agenda to further critical understanding of relations between crowdfunding and cities. First, we explore how crowdfunding is enrol... Read More about Crowdfunding cities: Social entrepreneurship, speculation and solidarity in Berlin.

De/re-densification: a relational geography of urban density (2020)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C. (2020). De/re-densification: a relational geography of urban density. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 24(1-2), 314-324. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1739911

In this article, I set out an approach to cities and urbanization through a relational geography of urban density. While density has long been central to the urban question, I argue for a focus on the relationship between densification, de-densificat... Read More about De/re-densification: a relational geography of urban density.

Relational Housing Across the North-South Divide: Learning Between Albania, Uganda, and the UK (2020)
Journal Article
Heslop, J., McFarlane, C., & Ormerod, E. (2020). Relational Housing Across the North-South Divide: Learning Between Albania, Uganda, and the UK. Housing Studies, 35(9), 1607-1627. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2020.1722801

In this paper we examine how to understand housing as a relational process. Drawing on research in three diverse cities, we stage an unlikely dialogue that brings together narratives of housing across the global North-South divide. In doing so, we ar... Read More about Relational Housing Across the North-South Divide: Learning Between Albania, Uganda, and the UK.

Understanding and Researching Urban Extreme Poverty: A Conceptual-Methodological Approach (2019)
Journal Article
Yap, C., & McFarlane, C. (2020). Understanding and Researching Urban Extreme Poverty: A Conceptual-Methodological Approach. Environment and Urbanization, 32(1), 254-274. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247819890829

Urban extreme poverty has long been regarded as a vital challenge for policy and practice, but how might we research it? In this paper, we set out a two-step approach to identifying and understanding the nature of urban extreme poverty (UEP). We expe... Read More about Understanding and Researching Urban Extreme Poverty: A Conceptual-Methodological Approach.

The Urbanization of the Sanitation Crisis: Placing Waste in the City (2019)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C. (2019). The Urbanization of the Sanitation Crisis: Placing Waste in the City. Development and Change, 50(5), 1239-1262. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12533

Sanitation systems are the most vital provisions in a city. Today, however, the global sanitation crisis is urbanizing, and growing numbers of city residents live with the struggle and consequences of not having safe, reliable facilities. While there... Read More about The Urbanization of the Sanitation Crisis: Placing Waste in the City.

Fragment Urbanism: Politics on the Margins of the City (2018)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C. (2018). Fragment Urbanism: Politics on the Margins of the City. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(6), 1007-1025. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818777496

Fragmentation is a keyword in the history of critical urban thought. Yet the products of fragmentation – the fragments themselves – tend to receive less attention. In this paper, I develop a politics of urban fragments as a contribution to debates bo... Read More about Fragment Urbanism: Politics on the Margins of the City.

On alternative smart cities: from a technology-intensive to a knowledge-intensive smart urbanism (2017)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C., & Söderström, O. (2017). On alternative smart cities: from a technology-intensive to a knowledge-intensive smart urbanism. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 21(3-4), 312-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2017.1327166

Smart urbanism seems to be everywhere you turn. But in practice the agenda is an uncertain one, usually only partially developed, and often more about corporate-led urban development than about urban social justice. Rather than leave smart urbanism t... Read More about On alternative smart cities: from a technology-intensive to a knowledge-intensive smart urbanism.

Navigating the city: dialectics of everyday urbanism (2017)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C., & Silver, J. (2017). Navigating the city: dialectics of everyday urbanism. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(3), 458-471. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12175

How might we conceptualise and research everyday urbanism? By examining the making of everyday life in a low-income neighbourhood in Uganda, we argue that a dialectics of everyday urbanism is a useful approach for understanding urban poverty. This di... Read More about Navigating the city: dialectics of everyday urbanism.

Cities within Cities: Intra-Urban Comparison of Infrastructure in Mumbai, Delhi and Cape Town (2016)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C., Silver, J., & Truelove, Y. (2017). Cities within Cities: Intra-Urban Comparison of Infrastructure in Mumbai, Delhi and Cape Town. Urban Geography, 38(9), 1393-1417. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2016.1243386

Comparison is now taken as vital to the constitution of knowledge about cities and urbanism. However, debate on comparative urbanism has been far more attentive to the merits of comparisons between cities than it has been to the potential and challen... Read More about Cities within Cities: Intra-Urban Comparison of Infrastructure in Mumbai, Delhi and Cape Town.