Learning the City: Translocal Assemblage and Urban Politics critically examines the relationship between knowledge, learning, and urban politics, arguing both for the centrality of learning for political strategies and developing a progressive international urbanism.
- Presents a distinct approach to conceptualising the city through the lens of urban learning
- Integrates fieldwork conducted in Mumbai's informal settlements with debates on urban policy, political economy, and development
- Considers how knowledge and learning are conceived and created in cities
- Addresses the way knowledge travels and opportunities for learning about urbanism between North and South
Table of Contents:
Series Editors' Preface ix Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Learning Assemblages 15
Introduction 15
Translation: Distribution, Practice and Comparison 17
Coordinating Learning 19
Dwelling and Perception 21
Assemblage Space 23
Conclusion 30
2 Assembling the Everyday: Incremental Urbanism and Tactical Learning 32
Introduction 32
Incremental Urbanism 33
Learning the Unknown City: Street Children in Mumbai 43
Learning, Rhythm, Space 47
Tactical Learning 54
Conclusion 59
3 Learning Social Movements: Tactics, Urbanism and Politics 62
Introduction 62
Knowing Social Movements 63
Global Slumming 66
The Housing Assemblage: Materializing Learning 69
Learning and Representation: Counting the Poor 74
Entrepreneurial Learning 85
Conclusion 90
4 Urban Learning Forums 92
Introduction 92
Uncertain Forums 93
Dialogic Urban Forums 98
Translocalism and Translation 105
Conclusion 113
5 Travelling Policies, Ideological Assemblages 115
Introduction 115
Translating Policy 117
Comparative Learning: Translation and Colonial Urbanism 122
Ideology and Postwar Urban Planning 128
Neoliberal Urban Learning Assemblages 134
Ideology and Explanation: Beyond Diffusionist Story-Making 145
Conclusion 151
6 A Critical Geography of Urban Learning 153
Introduction 153
The Actual and the Possible 155
Agency and Critical Learning 160
Assemblage and the Critical Learning Imaginary 164
Postcolonial Urban Learning? 167
Conclusion 172
Conclusion 174
References 185
Index 205
About the Author :
Colin McFarlane is Lecturer in Human Geography at Durham University, UK. His research focuses on urban geography, especially theorising the intersections between urban inequality, materiality, and knowledge.
Review :
“Readers who have ever puzzled over the movement of particular discourses or knowledge systems from one urban context to another, or between otherwise disparate groups, will find in this volume an exhaustive and compelling effort to theorize the development, movement, and effects of learning … Its revelatory power is arguably profound: for McFarlane, it promises nothing short of understanding the power to forge a different kind of city. In the 21st century city, the material and analytical stakes of learning could not be higher.” (Antipode, 1 September 2013)
“This book is a significant step in bringing learning to the core of urban study … This volume’s detailed fieldwork effectively supports its desire to see learning occupy a central place in the production of more socially just urbanisms.” (Area, 1 May 2013)
“Learning the City is a critical academic contribution useful for scholars of the field ... It is sure to become indispensable for academics of the discipline.” (Geography Helvitica, 1 December 2012)
"Through Learning the City McFarlane has made a major contribution to our understandings of the urban. In its commitment to the diverse and lively practices through which the city is learned and known, in its engagement with the diverse forms of agency and political practices through which agency is assembled and re-assembled the book enlivens understandings of spatial politics. It is also a text that is animated by a powerful sense of hope that cities might come to bere-assembled in different ways that are more equitable and more open to different agentic forces and contributions." (Society and Space, 1 November 2012) "In Learning the City, McFarlane successfully manages to open the black box of urban learning in widening the perspective to acknowledge diverse urban learning practices, which may even bear a transformative potential in certain contexts." (International Planning Studies, 23 October 2012)
"Learning the City is an important and theoretically sophisticated piece of work. It is like a good movie: you need to re-view it in your mind several times to position yourself ... McFarlane’s innovative theory of urban learning is very helpful to an understanding of contemporary urbanism and of how it can be changed for the better. Its great merit is to make us see cities as complex learning assemblages and milieus." (Urban Geography, 34.1)
“A wonderfully insightful book that rewards careful attention and deserves a wide readership ... A powerful framework for re-thinking issues of poverty, urban informality and development in the Global South.” (Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34 (2013))
“A rich and perceptive account of how we dwell in and learn about cities and what it takes to live an urban life … McFarlane’s book forces us to review the conceptual tools we have in the planning field for “getting to know” what cities are like and how urban life is experienced.” (Patsy Healey, Planning Theory & Practice, 14:2)
“Urbanism, McFarlane believes, needs a theory of learning; throughout his book he builds a very sophisticated one…[he] brings us closer to the material stuff of urban life and politics…a kind of urbanism in motion, whereby what we come to term ‘knowledge’, ‘infrastructure’ and ‘resources’ are never simply ‘there’, but must be translated, distributed, coordinated, perceived and inhabited”. (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 38.1, January 2014).
