Special Issue Builder Webinar: Exploring Urban Policy Futures Through an International Comparative Lens

Webinar: Exploring Urban Policy Futures Through an International Comparative Lens

In an era marked by ongoing environmental, economic, political, social, and cultural challenges, urban policy-making has emerged as a critical arena for addressing these complex and interwoven issues. Over the past two decades, policy mobility research has introduced valuable frameworks for analysing urban future-making towards each of these challenges, including concepts such as assemblages, model cities, policy boosterism, network formation, inter-referencing, and scalar narratives. However, significant empirical and theoretical gaps remain in understanding the variations and dynamics that shape how ideas spread and are adopted. Empirically, current policy mobility research often relies on limited case studies, offering deep insights about local translation but overlooking broader patterns across cases. Theoretically, the literature often emphasises the trajectory and mobility of policy ideas rather than the comparative social space these processes generate among cities.

We invite you to join a webinar to delve into these gaps and explore innovative methodological and theoretical approaches to urban policymaking. Following the webinar, we plan to craft a formal proposal for a special issue for Urban Studies Journal inspired by this approach.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar is open to scholars interested in urban studies, policy-making, computational text analysis, and the future of cities.

Date and Process

To ensure a collaborative and productive process, we invite interested contributors to submit abstracts and letters of intent by 27 January 2025. These submissions will help shape the themes and goals of the Special Issue.

The webinar will take place on 26 February 2025, where we will discuss the submissions, refine the thematic and methodological focus, and outline the framework for the Special Issue. The discussions will inform the final proposal, which we will submit shortly thereafter.

If the proposal is accepted, a second webinar will be held where contributors can present drafts of their papers for further development and feedback.

We particularly encourage contributions that address the empirical and theoretical challenges in urban policy-mobility, with a focus on methods such as computational text analysis, and theoretical explorations of policy fields and ecologies.

Further information

For more details and brainstorming, please contact:

Noga Keidar: nogakeidar@tauex.tau.ac.il

Dan Silver: dan.silver@utoronto.ca