Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South

As a celebration of urban scholars and scholarship, the 50 chapters written by practitioners and theorists invite readers to reflect on the diversity of cities while getting to the core of debates related to cities of the Global South.

The chapters are highly diverse in the issues at stake, geographies, writing styles, conceptual approaches, and theoretical and practical groundings; and attempts to make sense of ongoing developments in the urban Global South are rigorously questioned and contested. The whole book embraces the fluidity and controversies of the field and highlights the strong commitment of its contributors to capture e.g. the informality, diversity, pace, instability, location, history, poverty and human energy of the examined cities in order to improve them and make them more just and sustainable.

For example, some scholars call for re-imagining theory in the post-colonial era and extending existing theories to evoke a Southern positionality; others advocate for a radical new theory where the point of departure is not theoretical insight drawn from Western thinking, but a theorization of Southern practices (for Western/Southern tensions and relations see especially Chapters 3 and 7 as well as Chapter 11 for travelling planning ideas).

Another critical aspect seems to be the learning from the people, i.e. the actors who are at the centre of struggles for fair and sustainable development and inclusive urban futures. For example, Chapter 26 highlights how the mobilization practices of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) can foster inclusive politics through collectively negotiating reforms and resource re-distribution. Chapter 28 critically reflects on who we refer to as “the people” and highlights that certain income groups are largely excluded or underrepresented in current development debates. Similarly, Chapter 43 emphasizes the necessity to pay attention to and include people living at peri-urban fringes.

The book generally encourages readers, from both the Global North and South, to reflect on their geographical alignment in their engagement with cities, and to take insights from Southern urban studies as reference points for comparative debate and collective learning.

While the chapters are loosely clustered into seven parts, ranging from themes such as Critical Urbanism to Negotiating Society and Identity to Conceptualizing the Built Environment, readers will discover multiple ways to read, use and analyze this handbook. The introduction states clearly that scholarship on the urban Global South is rapidly expanding and that it is difficult to comprehensively capture a field in which debates evolve quickly, contributors come from many backgrounds and issues are highly diverse. However, the handbook covers vast expertise on cutting-edge debates and thus provides a great resource for readers who are keen to be part of this field.

Book note prepared by Julia Wesely