Towards a Global Urban Geopolitics

Dr Jonathan Rokem was invited to lecture in the Cities and Society Seminar Series of the University of Oslo, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, on 24^th May,

Conflict and violence have become predominantly urban political and humanitarian concerns. The political geographies of cities are thus being reshaped, often in unpredictable ways, as their populations come together or are polarised in underexplored patterns.

Jonathan’s lecture, Towards a Global Urban Geopolitics - Bringing Geopolitics into the Mainstream of Comparative Urban Studies, viewed cities as contested centres of social, spatial and political change, and proposed a comparative research agenda to re-frame urban contestation as a dynamic process.

In comparing different cities, he emphasised the significance of learning from non-conventional cases¸ beyond the so-called ‘global urban’ theory based on the usual suspects. Instead, it is timely to compare different urban geopolitical contexts to reveal the increasing range of conflicts, contestations and cultural formations that are shaping the future of cities.

Some of Jonathan’s recent research, supported by the EU-funded Marie Curie Contested Urbanism project (2015-2017), has involved spatial analysis of public transport infrastructures in Jerusalem and Stockholm, linked to statistical analysis of their urban geopolitical composition.

In Jerusalem, public transport access is multi-dimensional, shaping opportunities for spatial mobility that may either overcome or reinforce urban intergroup ethnonational violence. In Stockholm despite the long-standing political vision of social integration, there is increasing ethnic spatial separation.

The lecture concluded by reviewing opportunities to counterbalance fractured urban reality in both cities.

See

• For more information about the Cities and Society Seminar Series
• The Contested Urbanism research project has been written up on the EU website