‘Cities Rethought’ is a critical rethinking of a new urban disposition

I write this from a metropolis, Delhi, caught in the thick of smog. Each year, as winter sets in, a toxic cocktail spreads through the north Indian airshed, leaving residents of the region equally vulnerable and frustrated. A cacophony of voices across media platforms berates everyone, from farmers to politicians, while the cyclical nature of the crisis leads them to the conclusion that nothing seems to change.

Yet, my decade-long research on the issue shows that a lot has actually been achieved, even if this has been under the surface in some ways. We know the issue so much better than we did a decade back; there are nuanced policy debates related to what to do and how; and a range of social agents from scientists, advocates, activists and concerned citizens keep the discussion going even when the smog invariably recedes. Moreover, that concerns related to social justice are now a critical part of policy considerations is in itself a major change from a previous era of anti-pollution actions that had deleterious impacts on marginalised urban and peri-urban populations.

I open with this story because it resonates with the tone of the new book by Gautam Bhan, Michael Keith, Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse. They argue that working on and with tricky urban problems is about more than counting successes. It ‘shapes us as practitioners, citizens and humans’, offering ‘respite, hope and possibility’.

‘Cities Rethought’ is a critical reflection on urban thinking and practice in, as it outlines, a time of polycrisis with simultaneously social, political, economic and ecological underpinnings. The book reads like a conversation between comrades who, while writing from diverse locales, are bound by a thread of a deep commitment to place, justice and collegiality. We find out what attending to these while working on specific matters looks like in cities like Durban, London, Delhi and Shenzhen, where the authors have engaged in long-term practice. The authors chart the contours of what they term ‘a new urban disposition’ that places equal emphasis on knowing, reflecting and practising, or what the authors call ‘normative locations’, ‘analytical redescriptions’, and ‘operational moves’, respectively. The book expands on each of these elements, while stressing their connections, through individual chapters after setting the agenda in the opening chapter.

Contemporary urban practice is saturated with one-sided invocations of a futuristic technological order fuelled by big data and AI. A number of academic programmes under the rubric of urban sciences have sprung up to farm expertise in and implement these techno-scientific visions. The authors remind us that this process is not just a continuation of the ongoing ‘digitalisation’ of urban life that privileges an aerial view. It is already held together, undermined and entangled with a multitude of ‘small forces’ and everyday affordances, requiring a humanistic engagement with the texture of the city.

The urban disposition described in the book, therefore, seeks to work across disciplines, looking to know from ‘different angles, through different eyes, across commensurate and incommensurate forms of data, moving it across scale and time’. Such an endeavour is only possible by working across silos, by collaborating, and by striving to create institutional spaces to hold experiments and take them forward.

‘Cities Rethought’ is written for scholars, practitioners, students, and others interested in a just urban future. The book’s conversational nature is unlike the typical academic works that otherwise populate this field, and it offers a thoughtful pause for readers to reflect on their own experiences and values no matter their point of entry into the urban.

— The writer teaches Urban Studies at Dr BR Ambedkar University, Delhi