Unbounding Critical Geographic Research on Cities: The 1990S and beyond1

Abstract

Critical urban geography came to dominate knowledge production in urban geography during the 1990s. This extremely fruitful research program nevertheless faces certain bounds to knowledge production that hinder its ongoing vitality. With respect to conceptual approaches, there has been considerable unbounding from an earlier focus on class and commodity production, recognizing the importance of other axes of social differentiation for urban processes and urban lives. Transcending a bounded conception of cities as objects of inquiry has been slower. With respect to philosophical foundations, strenuously contested philosophical boundaries persist between critical and other urban geography and within critical urban geography. With respect to participation in knowledge production, disciplinary boundaries marginalize knowledge situated in non-White communities and the global south, and critical urban geographers face criticism for failing to broaden knowledge production beyond the Ivory Tower. Notwithstanding a good track record of policy-oriented research, critical urban geographers need to decenter knowledge production, by including disadvantaged communities as full partners in this process. Helen Longino provides critical urban geographers a model for unbounded, nonrelativist and nonmonist knowledge production.

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