Editors’ Featured Articles

Read this quarter's Editors’ Featured Articles, which are available free access on a temporary basis.

Each year, Urban Studies publishes around 180 articles advancing the field of urban knowledge. To further promote and facilitate the work of urban scholars we have now introduced Editors’ Featured Articles, which will be accessible via the Urban Studies Online website.

Editors’ Featured Articles makes popular and significant articles that have been recently published available to access for free on a temporary basis. In addition, selective papers that are not yet in print but connect with the subject matter of these articles in interesting ways will also be available on a temporary free access basis via the website. Featured articles will be updated every quarter.

Follow our Twitter account @USJ_online and subscribe to Urban Studies Online to keep informed of the latest free access articles.

 

Agglomeration and assemblage: Deterritorialising urban theory

Kim Dovey, Fujie Rao and Elek Pafka

Critical commentary: Towards an open theory of urbanity.

Theorising democratic space with and beyond Henri Lefebvre

Mark Purcell

Purcell argues that the project of democracy must extend beyond the thinking of Henri Lefebvre, arguing that we should turn towards the work and insights of Judith Butler in this debates paper.

Africa’s new cities: The contested future of urbanisation

Femke van Noorloos and Marjan Kloosterboer

“The future of the world’s urbanisation will be in Africa”: Conceptualising ‘new city’ making in Africa.

An enclave entrepôt: The informal migration industry and Johannesburg’s socio-spatial transformation

Tanya Zack and Loren B. Landau

This special issue article argues that the global trade in Chinese 'fast fashion' transforms Johannesburg's Park Station neighbourhood into an enclave entrepôt.

Who owns the future city? Phases of technological urbanism and shifts in sovereignty

Jathan Sadowski

"While capital was bailed out and continued with business-as-usual, cities were reconfigured in ways that further opened them up to new forms of capital—not just financial, but now technological." Sadowski on the three phases of tech urbanism.

Why bright city lights dazzle and illuminate: A cognitive science approach to urban promises

Rodrigo Cardoso, Evert Meijers, Maarten van Ham, Martijn Burger and Duco de Vos

Why do we have such positive expectations about cities? This Debates paper offers a novel contribution by examining how the cognitive biases and heuristics which restrict human rationality shape our responses to urban promises.