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All Outputs (91)

Introduction: rethinking urban density (2020)
Journal Article
Chen, H., 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.

Enhancing urban autonomy: towards a new political project for cities (2016)
Journal Article
Bulkeley, H., Luque-Ayala, A., McFarlane, C., & MacLeod, G. (2018). Enhancing urban autonomy: towards a new political project for cities. Urban Studies, 55(4), 702-719. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098016663836

As the 21st Century world assumes an increasingly urban landscape, the question of how definitive urban spaces are to be governed intensifies. At the heart of this debate lies a question about the degree and type of autonomy that towns and cities mig... Read More about Enhancing urban autonomy: towards a new political project for cities.

Life at the urban margins: sanitation infra-making and the potential of experimental comparison (2016)
Journal Article
Lancione, M., & McFarlane, C. (2016). Life at the urban margins: sanitation infra-making and the potential of experimental comparison. Environment and Planning A, 48(12), 2402-2421. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x16659772

How is life at the urban margins made and remade? In this paper, we examine this question in relation to ‘sanitation urbanism’, and through attention to what we call ‘infra-making’, defined as the interstitial labour of human and non-human agencies a... Read More about Life at the urban margins: sanitation infra-making and the potential of experimental comparison.

The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town (2016)
Journal Article
McFarlane, C., & Silver, J. (2017). The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 49(1), 125-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12264

In an urbanizing world, the inequalities of infrastructure are increasingly politicized in ways that reconstitute the urban political. A key site here is the politicization of human waste. The centrality of sanitation to urban life means that its pol... Read More about The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town.

Encountering was it (not) there (2016)
Book Chapter
McFarlane, C. (in press). Encountering was it (not) there. In J. Darling, & H. Wilson (Eds.), Encountering the City. Urban Encounters from Accra to New York (229-232). Ashgate Publishing